In December 2006 the Institute for World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IWE) was commissioned by SIEPS to map the interests of the EU Member States and their positions with regard to the EU budget, in order to analyse both the prospects for reform, as well as the possible content of such a reform, during the budget review 2008/2009. The study employs a twin-track approach.

The report summarises the results from a SIEPS funded research project on the EU as an actor in the field of global development. The authors analyse three specific policy areas; trade and economic cooperation, international development cooperation and security and conflict management.

The development of institutional competencies within the EU’s external action in general, and in the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy and European Security and Defence Policy in particular, have brought questions concerning the division of roles between the different actors to the fore. Meanwhile, as ambition has increased so has expectations.

The report analyses the effects of free movement for workers from the new Member States to Sweden. The immigration is still small compared with total immigration to Sweden.

The European Commission has proposed a common energy policy conducted in a spirit of solidarity among Member States as an instrument to address the issue of energy security. The authors of this report, Chloé Le Coq and Elena Paltseva, highlight that such a common energy policy may entail biased economic incentives and thereby cause problems with so-called moral hazard.

The report, written by Jorge Nuñéz Ferrer, Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), analyses how the own resources system can be reformed to foster better decision-making in relation to policy-making in the EU. The author argues that a combined strategy of policy reform and changes in the own resources system is necessary and the report therefore proposes to finance the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in a different way.

SIEPS’ annual conference 2007 was held on the theme The Purse of the European Union: Setting Priorities for the Future. The conference was arranged in the light of the EU budget review process that was launched in September 2007 and which is expected to be concluded in 2008-2009.

The French Presidency selected four priorities – immigration, defence, climate change and energy, agriculture – in line with the European agenda but also with national interests. The Union for the Mediterraneanwas later added to this list.

Slovenia, Germany and Portugal have agreed on a common 18-month programme of the first presiding "trio". As the last presiding country within the trio, Slovenia mainly took on the fairly "traditional role" of a small country holding the EU presidency - managing "a good presidency" for the EU.

The Swedish EU Presidency during the second half of 2009 will be constrained by a number of external factors such as the investiture of a new Commission, a newly elected European Parliament and it will probably be held under constitutional uncertainty. Nonetheless, the Swedish Government will want to make a mark on the priorities of the European Union during the Presidency.