European leaders on Thursday were close to approving Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term as EU Commission chief, but struggled to agree on how to relaunch the stalled Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.

The 27 leaders were also due to discuss efforts to tighten financial-sector supervision, despite British reluctance to hand over powers to new EU authorities.

Little more than a week after European parliament elections, Barroso is virtually assured of winning five more years. There is no other viable candidate.

British holidaymakers are shunning the eurozone in favour of long-haul destinations and non-euro countries, according to the latest figures.

Skyscanner, an online flight booking website, has seen flight searches to eurozone destinations fall by as much as 15 per cent, compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, searches for flights to long-haul destinations such as Bangkok (up 271 per cent) have surged, while Turkey (outside of the eurozone) features three destinations in the list of top 10 searches. Since May 2008, sterling has fallen by 13 per cent against the euro.

Non-EU foreigners wanting to get married to a Spaniard in Spain should take heed that the process is neither quick nor easy. Below is a quick guide for what you will need. This is based on a Madrid experience with a US citizen. Expect several months for the process.

1. Congratulations! You have decided to tie the knot with your Spanish honey. The first thing you need to do is get all your US paperwork in order.

The Irish Republic’s government is to unveil its second budget in six months as the economy contracts sharply.

Dublin faces the double challenge of dealing with a deepening recession while being forced to correct the worst deficit in Europe.

Unemployment is tipped to near 12% in 2009 and based on government forecasts the deficit could reach four times the level allowed by the European Union.

The Irish emergency budget is likely to mean higher taxes and lower spending.

Research by the online comparison websites Cheapflights and Trivago has found that room rates have been cut by up to a quarter in the past six months in an attempt to encourage Britons to take more short breaks on the Continent.

The weakness of sterling against the euro has seen holidaymakers’ pounds fall by up to 20 per cent in value in the Eurozone and prompted tourists to look at destinations not aligned to the euro, such as Turkey and Egypt.

The French capital’s hugely popular cycle hire scheme, Velib, rolled outside the city for the first time on Tuesday as the first of 29 suburbs was plugged into the network.

Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris, cut the ribbon on 21 docking stations filled with gleaming new bikes, with the easy-access scheme to be extended to the inner suburbs surrounding the capital by the end of the year.

The rate of unemployment in the recession-struck Irish Republic rose to 11% in February, the highest since 1996, official figures have shown.

The rate rose from 10.4% in January and from 7.7% during the October to December quarter of 2008.

Some 370,000 people got a jobseeker allowance in February, 87.5% more than in February last year and a new record.

Next week, the Irish government is due to unveil an emergency budget to try to curb the worst recession in decades.

The Franco-German motor was for decades the driving force behind EU integration, but at this week’s Brussels summit French motors raised fears of protectionism pulling the EU apart.

Just as EU leaders were putting the final touches to their summit conclusions, the news broke that Renault was shifting some car production back to the Paris suburbs from Slovenia, creating 400 jobs.

Hastily, Renault and French officials moved to quell speculation that this could amount to protectionism.

Spain, which refuses to recognise Kosovo, abruptly announced Thursday that it will withdraw its 630 troops from the international peacekeeping force there, drawing criticism from NATO.

“Mission accomplished,” Defence Minister Carme Chacon told Spanish troops with the NATO-led KFOR force during a surprise visit to Kosovo. “It’s time to go home. We’re going home, congratulations.”

She told Spanish journalists accompanying her that the pullout would be carried out in stages by August and “in coordination with out allies”.

Sweden’s government on Thursday proposed a major restructuring of the military, ending conscription and sharply increasing the number of troops ready for immediate deployment.

“We have developed a totally new approach to defence policy and we are preparing for the biggest renewal of the military in decades,” Defence Minister Sten Tolgfors told reporters.

A million civil servants went on strike Thursday and workers marched in France’s second nationwide street protests this year to denounce President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis.

“The crisis is not the fault of the workers,” said one banner at the biggest march in Paris, where police said 85,000 people fronted by union leaders left the central Republique Square headed for Bastille.

Poland and France were at odds Thursday over an EU Commission scheme to grant 600 million euros in aid to six ex-Soviet states, with Paris fearing it would lessen the pot for Mediterranean nations.

The commission has proposed the funding to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine under the European Union’s “Eastern Partnership” project, an initiative by Poland and Sweden to counterbalance the Mediterranean partnership scheme championed last year by France.

More than a decade after the introduction of a single European currency, nearly half of Britons (43 per cent) were still unaware that founding member, Austria, is part of the Eurozone.

Almost a third of the 2000 travellers polled did not know that Turkey – generally considered a cheaper option to traditional European destinations – does not use the euro, while nearly half of respondents believed that Denmark is in the eurozone (it actually uses the Kroner). Three-quarters of Britons were also unaware that Slovakia has adopted the euro.

The UN’s climate change chief has accused Europe’s politicians of shifting the goalposts in global talks on climate change.

The EU agreed at the Bali climate summit last December to bankroll clean technology in developing countries if they agreed to take appropriate actions to curb emissions growth.

The fragile deal was reached after marathon talks.

But EU politicians are now asking for more action for their money. They want developing countries to produce plans to cut emissions across their entire economy before getting cash help from the EU.

Spanish police have arrested an Ecuadorian woman who tried to smuggle liquid cocaine hidden in spray cans of products to starch clothes or clean glass into Barcelona, police said Tuesday.

The 35-year-old was carrying more than 1.5 kilograms of the drug hidden in false bottoms in three spay cans found in the baggage she checked in on her flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, they said in a statement.

EU finance ministers clinched a long-sought deal Tuesday allowing cut-rate sales taxes on certain services, as Germany yielded to French pressure to allow less tax to be charged in restaurants.

The Czech EU presidency brokered a compromise agreement that in particular will allow member states to charge value added tax rates of as little as 5.5 percent in restaurants, Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek said.

French lawmakers have voted to ban alcohol sales to minors as part of a crackdown on teenage binge drinking but dropped contested plans to ban wine tastings and alcohol ads on the Internet.

Deputies in the National Assembly late Monday approved an amendment to a health ministry bill raising the legal age limit from 16 to 18 for both alcohol and tobacco sales, bringing France in line with most of Europe.

The UK economy contracted 1.8% between December and February, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has estimated.

The fall in GDP was bigger than the 1.7% drop seen in the three months to the end of January, NIESR said.

The level of economic activity is now 4.3% below its peak of April 2008, according to NIESR’s data.

The think tank praised the Bank of England’s policy of quantitative easing but said it did not go far enough.

Women rallied worldwide Sunday to demand equal rights and protest against domestic violence and growing poverty in the global economic crisis as they marked International Women’s Day.

Thousands gathered in public squares from Bangalore to Kinshasa to the capitals of Europe, drawing attention to discrimination and fears facing women in their respective countries.

Nearly 100 years old, International Women’s Day on 8 March marks an ongoing worldwide battle to ensure equal rights for half the globe’s population on issues such as work, voting and abortion.

One of this year’s key events will be a massive Women’s Day meet this weekend in Liberia, hosted by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to focus on the future of women in the world.