For weeks, the former British prime minister was the front-runner for the post which will be created in the 27-nation bloc's Lisbon reform treaty, which is still awaiting the signature of the Czech president.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, his initial sponsor, said he would have a hard time getting the job because Britain had not joined the euro single currency.

In a television interview on Sunday, in a speech on Monday and at a briefing with reporters in Luxembourg, Miliband set out his vision for a strong Europe that needs a leader like Blair.

"There is a precedent to be set about whether or not we want a strong leadership figure," Miliband said. “My own view, in that context, is that Tony Blair, if he is a candidate, would be a very good choice.”

He said the changes set out in the Lisbon treaty offered an opportunity for the EU to renew its foreign policy.

"I genuinely believe that unless Europe does so, we will find ... that a G20 informally, if not formally, emerges as the key decision making axis in the world - the U.S. and China,“ Miliband said.

He dismissed “as flanking manoeuvres” complaints about Britain’s absence from the euro zone and the borderless Schengen area, and about Blair’s decision to back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

“This is about every country thinking: do we want a strong collective direct European voice in the world? And this is a job that needs someone who is persuasive, an advocate of a strong vision and committed to coalition-building. And I think that's what Tony stands for," Miliband said.

Does Blair still have a chance to become the first president of the EU’s council of leaders? Diplomats say that although his chances have receded, much will depend on the EU’s big powers - France and Germany.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner did not rule it out during foreign ministers' talks in Luxembourg. He said he backed Blair but that there were others involved in any decision.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not made her views clear on Blair but she now has agreement on a new coalition and is expected to show her hand soon.

In a debate this week on the six-month Czech presidency of the European Union, Prime Minister Jan Fischer said that although the first six months of 2009 would go down in EU history as a demanding period, Prague had got through "without major hiccups".

Few people in the assembly seemed to agree. Deputies said there had been some successes, but overall were underwhelmed.

"The Czech presidency will not go down in history in the way that we had hoped," said Alexander Lambsdorff, a German from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats.

"What we would have liked the Czech presidency to achieve in terms of challenges has unfortunately not happened," said Rebecca Harms, a German member of the Greens. "Unfortunately your country was weak."

Holding the presidency was never going to be easy for a relatively small and new member state with a eurosceptic president in Vaclav Klaus.

Matters were made worse by two crises in January - Russia's gas price dispute with Ukraine and an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip - and the fall of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's government midway through the presidency.

Topolanek upset the European Parliament by saying U.S. efforts to end the economic crisis were a "path to hell" and Klaus prompted a walkout when he addressed the assembly.

There was also criticism of an artwork that was erected at EU headquarters but was later removed. The map of Europe by a Czech artist depicted Bulgaria as a toilet and Romania as a Dracula theme park. 

Even so, the parliament's feedback was not all bad. Fischer won praise for his work after taking over the government and the presidency. Some deputies said Prague had done well in standing up to protectionist moves and hailed its work in securing agreement on an overhaul of financial regulations and on measures intended to encourage Irish voters to back the EU's Lisbon reform treaty.   

"The Czech presidency proved a mid-sized country and so-called new member state can really do a very good job," said Jan Zahradil, a Czech member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group.

But overall the assessment was damning. Expectations are much higher for the Swedish presidency for the rest of the year.

"The Czech presidency has followed a depressingly familiar pattern," said Nigel Farage, leader of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party. "What we've got is an over-regulated model that is serving us very badly during the depths of a recession."

He, however, singled out what he called one wonderful moment - when Klaus accused EU leaders of not listening to European citizens and told them some "home truths", prompting some members of the assembly to walk out.

"At least for Vaclav Klaus, we thank you very much for the last six months," Farage said.

A lush green residential area in the south of Stockholm embodies Sweden’s determination to lead from the front in its efforts to combat climate change during its presidency of the European Union.

A decade ago, Hammarby Sjostad was a run-down industrial area with pollution problems. Today it is an environmentally friendly suburb which exemplifies the battle against climate change – one of Sweden’s priorities in its six-month presidency which began on Wednesday.

By 2018, Hammarby Sjostad will have almost 11,000 residential homes. Many are already built and 15,000 people already live in the tree-lined area next to a lake.

Most of the building materials are environmentally friendly, many have solar panels to heat water, and 50 percent of electricity and heat consumption comes from recycled organic and combustible waste. Waste water is also used in the heating system.

“Everything is recycled. All waste is regarded as useful material in one way or another,” architect Bjorn Cederquist said during a visit to Hammarby Sjostad.  

An innovative waste disposal system uses vacuum suction to send rubbish at high speed through underground pipes to a disposal unit on the edge of the town. This drastically reduces pollution because the garbage trucks that eventually take the rubbish away spend little time in the town itself and cover far less ground.

Biogas, an environmentally friendly fuel, is extracted from the digestion of sewage sludge from a waste treatment plant and used in buses, cars and cookers.

Hammary Sjostad is at the forefront of efforts to clean up the environment and Stockholm, where  people can be seen fishing in the city centre, plans to be free of fossil fuel by 2030.

“This is the achievement of a struggle for decades. When I was a kid, you could not swim in the centre of Stockholm,” said Gunnar Soderholm, director of Stockholm’s environment and health administration.

Sweden will need such determination in its efforts to find a common EU position for global climate change talks in Copenhagen in December which are intended to secure an agreement on a new global deal to limit harmful emissions.

 “The main challenge of our generation is climate change and we will do everything in our power to achieve a climate change agreement in December,” Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told a news conference on taking over the EU presidency from the Czech Republic on Wednesday. 

He said Sweden had cut emissions by 10 percent since 1990 but still managed to increase economic growth by about 50 percent in that time, helped by a carbon tax for industry which puts about 20 euro cents on the price of a litre of petrol.

The problem will be getting others to follow suit. The EU has led the way but developing countries want financial assistance from wealthy countries to help them combat climate change and cut emissions. Some of the poorer EU member states are wary of an agreement to share the burden of helping poor countries.

The EU has no power to impose CO2 taxes on member states and Sweden acknowledges it faces a hard task winning others over.

Reinfeldt said he was encouraged by recent signs that the United States is more ready to tackle climate change under President Barack Obama and hopes to win China’s backing for a deal to limit rises in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius. But Japan, he said, needed to do more to battle climate change.

Reinfeldt said he would address climate changes issues in the summits he will take part in over the six months with countries including the United States, Russia, China, Ukraine, China, Brazil, India and South Africa.

"We need global answers to a global problem," he said. 

The gloves are off in the run-up to this week's European Parliament election. 

The Party of European Socialists (PES) has published a list of 11 rival candidates it describes as terrible and invites readers to complete the list by adding a 12th candidate of his or her choice. The PES' centre-right rivals, the European People's Party (EPP), has hit back by calling it "cheap populism".

The list is headed by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and includes Jaime Mayor Oreja, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, and British National Party candidate Nick Griffin. Griffin, Igor Gräzin of the Estonia Reform Party and Derk-Jan Eppink of the Belgian Lijst Dedecker are the only three representing groups that are not part of the EPP.

PES officials said the candidates on the list would not contribute anything positive to parliament. In the case of Berlusconi, the PES' complaint is that he has no intention of sitting in any of Italy's five electoral regions. It said sed Oreja had not spoken in the parliament since November 2007 and had failed to condemn the authoritarian rule of General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1936 until 1975. 

It rejected statements by Eppink about what he called the the difficulty of being "a white, heterosexual Dutchman with a good job and an expensive car" in the Belgian region of Flanders. It criticised Brice Hortefeux, France's social affairs and employment minister, for saying illegal immigrants were neither "honest" nor "clean". Griffin has been condemned for denying the Holocaust.

EPP President Wilfried Martens issued a statement condemning the publication of the list and said it was a new low for the PES leadership.

“To call a number of distinguished EPP candidates ‘terrible’ as the PES did today or calling our millions of supporters across Europe ‘barbarians’ as the President of the Socialist International did last week, is truly regrettable,” Martens said. “I am convinced that the European citizens will punish the populism of the Socialists at the polls.”

The PES also suggested the EPP was such a broad alliance that voters who back a party in their home country could be backing a party in another country with policies and candidates he or she did not approve of.

Even so, the PES brings together various ideologies as well, with members ranging from the British Labour Party to the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

By Caroline Linton

The average Belgian eats 1,800 animals in his or her lifetime, but the city of Ghent is trying to reduce that number by making Thursdays “Veggie Day” -- a day without meat.

The Ghent City Council has joined forces with vegetarian activists in a campaign to encourage the city’s 240,000 residents to give up meat for one day a week.

Supporters say fewer greenhouse gases will be emitted by the meat industry and residents will be at lower risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Ghent officials say they are the first city in the world to take such a step.

On the first Veggie Day last month, the chef of the city council’s restaurant served visitors a lunch of two pancakes, one stuffed with spinach and blue cheese and the other with mushrooms and white cheese, and a mixed salad.

“It’s good to eat vegetarian, at least once a week, and if you want to do it on more days, you’re free to do so,” said Socialist City Councillor Tom Balthazar, a non-vegetarian who helped launch the campaign. “But we want to show that it is good for the health and that if it’s well cooked, it’s very tasty.”

Ghent resident Erika Van Den Hende, 25, a part-time teacher and snowboarder, said one day a week without meat sounded reasonable.

“Once a week, I can (do) without meat, but not every day!” she said.

Balthazar said there would be no “plate police” forcing anyone to give up meat and participation in the campaign was voluntary. 

The city is also promoting vegetarian meals in its canteens, schools and restaurants. Kindergartens and primary schools will offer vegetarian meals on Thursdays from September 2009. A city hospital has expressed interested in taking part as well and Balthazar hopes Ghent University will soon follow these leads.

The campaign also includes free vegetarian recipes in the free city magazine, cooking workshops for professionals and distributing a map of Ghent that indicates restaurants offering vegetarian options.

Ethical Vegetarian Awareness, which is behind the campaign, says that if every Ghent resident were to go meatless for just one day a week for a year, it would be the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars off the road.

Balthazar said 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the large-scale meat industry. Going vegetarian would also help water resources because large amounts of water are needed to cook just one kilogram of meat, he said.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” said 23-year-old Ghent resident Barbara Ardenois, a student. “I find the offer in restaurants too small so when you want to eat vegetarian, your choices are limited.”

Reporters at a long-awaited summit between the European Union and China in Prague Castle learnt more about the art of stage managing set-piece events than about the state of the EU-China relationship.

The Czech Republic, which holds the EU presidency until the end of next month, pulled out all the stops to ensure security was tight for Wednesday's fleeting visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and a handful of ministers, who were kept away from journalists by barriers.

Ushered into a stuffy holding room hours before the meeting, journalists were kept from stepping outside even for a smoke for fear of escaping into the sprawling compound of the castle.

Outside, other aspects of the summit were subjected to similar controls. About 60 peope protesting against alleged Chinese abuses of human rights were kept well away from the eyes of Wen, who swept into the castle in a motorcade of black limousines.

Instead of letting Wen arrive to a chorus of abuse, Chinese men in suits carefully orchestrated a more friendly crowd of local Chinese well-wishers who merrily waved Czech and Chinese flags as Wen and his entourage drove by.

Once Wen's car was safely within the sealed confines of the castle, the men handed out McDonald's hamburgers to thank the crowd, which held up two banners in Chinese declaring their love for the premier.

Back in the castle, journalists from as far afield as Japan, Brussels, London and Paris waited impatiently before finally getting permission to go to what had been hailed as a news conference.

What an anti-climax. Rumours that plans to have a question-and-answer session would be scuppered proved true. Czech President Vaclav Klaus started a series of scripted statements. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso signalled for Wen to go next, but Wen made it clear he wanted the final word after what he described as 20 hours of flying time to visit Prague for just a few hours.

After his long statement, there was no time left for questions -- on issues such as human rights or currencies -- leaving journalists wondering why they had bothered to travel all this way.

Aides acknowledged it was more of a ceremonial, set-piece event than a meeting of substance.

"Nowadays very few decisions are taken in the European Union without the express consent and participation of the European Parliament," said the parliament's president, Hans-Gert Poettering. 

"Increasingly, the European Parliament has become the fulcrum of political compromise at European level," he said, reeling off a long list of laws passed in the assembly's five-year term. 

Graham Watson, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the chamber, hailed Poettering's work: "Today, I think that I can speak for many when I say that you have earned our respect and affection."

They are fine-sounding words -- but few of the 375 million people who are eligible to vote in the June 4-7 election to a new parliament are likely to have heard them. And few are likely to care.

Opinion polls suggest the turnout will be low, with only about one in three respondents planning to vote. They also suggest European citizens know little about what the parliament does, even though it is responsible for passing pan-European laws that can have a direct impact on their lives.

This apathy could open the way for non-mainstream parties.    

One of these is the Libertas party, a pan-European group which opposes the Lisbon treaty intended to reform the EU's institutions to make decision-making easier and give the EU more clout on the world stage.

Another is the UK Independence Party which wants to pull Britain out of the EU.  Its leader, Nigel Farage, sounded a dissonant note on Wednesday when he accused it of being undemocratic in a speech from the floor of the assembly in the French city of Strasbourg.

He said the parliament had "bulldozed" aside the wishes of Dutch and French voters who rejected the EU's draft constitution in 2005 and the desires of Irish voters who said 'no' last year to the Lisbon reform treaty that is meant to replace it.

"This parliament has wilfully carried on ignoring the wishes of the people. You just don't get it do you? 'No' means 'no'," Farage told the assembly. 

The parliament appears to have a long way to go to convince voters it is relevant to their daily lives.

Little wonder, then, that Poettering urged members of the assembly to go out and explain to voters why the parliament is significant. 

"The next five years will see hugely important decisions face this Parliament. If you care what decisions it takes, and you care who is taking them, then make your voice heard," Poettering said in a recent message to voters.

Judging by the opinion polls, the members of parliament will have a hard time winning voters over. And they have barely a month to do so.

The Czech Republic issued a statement on Tuesday condemning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at a U.N. conference on racism in which he called Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime".

The statement by the country holding the EU presidency was meant to underline the bloc's unity but highlighted divisions on the issue.

Although 22 member states said they would stay to the end of the Geneva conference, four others have not attended from the start and the Czech Republic has decided to play no further role in the meeting.

The failure of member states to agree on a joint position shows how hard it is for the bloc to reach agreement on a common foreign and security policy now that it comprises 27 countries.

Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said the decision of some EU member states to boycott the Geneva conference was "no sign of strength in the EU at this time".

The EU stance has also opened the bloc to criticism from U.N. officials and human rights campaigners over a walkout by 23 EU delegations over Ahmadinejad's remarks, and also left the EU at odds with the United States, which is not attending. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner criticised the U.S. decision not to attend -- something that is unlikely to go down well in all EU capitals at a time when the EU and Washington are trying to improve ties under President Barack Obama.

How can the EU avoid such problems in the future? Many EU leaders say the answer is the Lisbon treaty setting out reforms of the Union's unwieldy institutions. The treaty is intended to provide stronger leadership and make foreign policy more effective, creating the post of EU foreign minister.

But as on many other issues, the EU is having trouble winning final agreement on the treaty. It is still awaiting approval from states including Ireland, which has already rejected it once. Until then, the EU will remain open to criticism, including from within its own ranks.

Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said the decision of some EU member states to boycott the Geneva conference was "no sign of strength in the EU at this time". Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the EU's inability to form a common front "shows the inability .... to find at least the slightest common denominator on a core issue: that of fighting against discrimination."