European leaders yesterday sought to brush aside the decision by Barack Obama, the US president, not to travel to Spain in May for a summit with European Union heads of state

A clash over control of European Union foreign policy pits countries that want to promote the authority of Lady Ashton against nations such as France and Spain determined to defend the role of national governments in external relations

When Spain takes over the European Union's six-month presidency from Sweden on January 1, it will inherit much more than the usual catalogue of economic and foreign policy challenges

US President Barack Obama dealt the EU a blow last week when he declined an invitation to attend a planned EU-US summit. The cancellation was in large part triggered by European squabbling over whether to hold the summit in Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency, or Brussels, where the bloc's new president, Herman Van Rompuy, is based (EurActiv 02/02/10). A meeting of European Union lea...

• Barack Obama's team in tactical retreat at Nato summit • Tensions within alliance at 60th anniversary meeting European leaders are expected to resist American pressure today to join in the Pentagon's military "surge" in Afghanistan, disappointing Barack Obama. The US president has made the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida the centrepiece of his new foreign policy. A ...

When Spain took over the European Union's six-month presidency from Sweden on January 1, it inherited much more than the usual catalogue of economic and foreign policy challenges because it is the first incumbent to operate under the Lisbon Treaty rules

Barack Obama is the first Democrat to be Commander in Chief in the post 9/11 era. The election of a Democrat was a necessary requirement for the emergence of a new, settled American foreign policy for this time. You can’t have a bi-partisan foreign policy consensus when only one party knows the foreign policy challenges from the inside. Certainly the Bush administration made mistakes on fore...

Recent tensions between France, the European Commission and the European Parliament over the Roma expulsions carried out by the French authorities this summer are likely to mar today's EU summit, which was supposed to discuss the Union's common foreign policy.

Since well before the inauguration of Barack Obama, European Union officials have been trying to organize the first summit meeting between their leaders and the new president of the United States.

Barack Obama is likely to pursue an "America first" approach to foreign policy as he struggles to rescue the domestic economy Downing Street sources admit.