Apart from the EU presidents, much attention will fall on the EU Foreign Minister whose difficult task will be to shape and articulate a common foreign policy. In an ideal world, there should be a single EU voice on foreign policy matters but this may be a bridge too far. Recently we saw the difficulty in this House, this country and Europe in forging a common European approach to the crisis in Iraq. One remarkable feature was the difference in opinion between newly emerging states of eastern Europe and countries such as France and Germany. There may be cynics – not in this House, of course – who would suggest that the American dollar might have been an influencing factor but this is over-simplistic. We have to appreciate that countries which emerged from the grip of Soviet dictatorship are probably in no rush to take new dictation on what their views of world affairs should be. The EU Foreign Minister will, therefore, have to proceed with caution and I am sure that much compromise and fudge will be necessary to make this role workable. As with the proposed EU president, it is possible to envisage in the years ahead a much more powerful EU Foreign Minister of a Union speaking with one voice on international matters. However, that is a debate for another day.