Brussels, 28/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - John Palmer, Director of The European Policy Centre, made an overall positive assessment of the European Council that closed the Belgian Presidency, in an article entitled "The Laeken Summit - a Milestone for Europe" Among the hiccups, in this positive analysis, we find the lack of agreement on the site of the new agencies, "sabotaged in the last minutes" by Silvio Berlusconi and, "to a lesser extent", by President Chirac, which means that "this poisoned chalice" now moves into the hands of the Spanish Presidency Otherwise, John Palmer welcomes the decision on the future Convention, considering that "unanimous or clear majority proposals will give the Convention a moral and political authority that will be difficult for Member States governments to ignore" (the attentive observer of European politics that John Palmer is also remarks that an interval for reflection between the end of the work of the Convention and the beginning of the IGC "could coincide with a UK referendum on joining the euro in the autumn of 2003"). As for enlargement, John Palmer notes that "some diplomats privately believe there will be another enlargement phase" from 2006 and a "new phase of enlargement" that could cover Bulgaria and Romania and "some new candidates from the western Balkans". Finally, he points out that "in the corridors of the EU Summit" there was also a lot of talk of the future transatlantic relationship, and that, "apart from the almost unanimous EU opposition to any future US military attack on Iraq", in Laeken there was much informal; discussion about Washington's scrapping of the ABM Treaty and the American veto on the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. (Address: info@theepc.be)