Following today's monthly meeting of the Finance Ministers of all EU member states in Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker the Chairman of the Eurogroup and the country's Prime Minister told reporters that "Estonia will become the 17th member of the Euro area on January 1, 2011".

He said Estonia had pledged "to ensure the sustainability of convergence by implementing further structural reforms" and the positive decision came after the Eurogroup took into consideration the "impressive recent performance ... in fulfilling the convergence (Euro) criteria".

According to the convergence criteria set down in the Maastricht Treaty, aspiring members have to limit their budget deficits to 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), their gross debt to 60% of GDP and their inflation to within 1.5 percentage points of the three best-performing EU states.

As well documented, many Euro states have broken those rules many times in the last decade, but Estonia's deficit on the other hand is estimated at 2.4% GDP this year and its debt at 9.6% of GDP, which is better than any current member.

Today's decision by the Eurogroup is not the final link in the chain however, as it requires a further approval via a vote at the next EU summit scheduled for June 17th - which should be a formality now.

Assuming this is the case, experts will then finalise the terminal exchange rate between the Euro and the Estonian kroon, which have long been pegged, before Eurozone and EU finance ministers take a final decision on the issue on July 13.

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On Sunday, citizens in Slovenia narrowly approved a border arbitration deal with Croatia on Sunday in a referendum, clearing a major obstacle to Croatia’s European Union membership bid.

With 99.9% of votes counted, preliminary results showed 51.5% of Slovenes supported the deal, the state electoral commission has said. Turnout was around 50%, and opinion polls prior to the polling stations opening suggested that the referendum might go either way.

The result should boost Croatia's chances of joining the EU in 2012 if it succeeds in completing accession negotiations in the next year.

Under the agreed deal on the border dispute, an international team will now step in to help settle a dispute over the land and sea border that dates from the 1991 break-up of Yugoslavia. The ruling would be binding for both countries.

In the past, Croatia has called for the border in the Bay of Piran in the Adriatic Sea, pictured left, to be drawn down the middle of the bay. But Slovenia, which has a much shorter coastline than its neighbour, feared this border definition would deny its ships direct passage to the high seas hampering its trade potential.

Slovenia, unsatisfied with their neighbours providing maps and documents in negotiations that failed to take account of Slovenia's position, exercised their veto over the latter’s application to begin accession talks to enter the 27-state bloc.

Prime Minister Borut Pahor, whose centre-left government made ending the border dispute with Croatia its main foreign policy goal, was understandably delighted with the result and told national TV Slovenia "this is a historic decision ... This is a big success for Slovenia".

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso too welcomed the referendum result, declaring it an “important step forward.”

“We now look forward to a final settlement of the dispute. Resolving this bilateral issue is an important signal for the region and the relations between Slovenia and Croatia," he said in a statement.

David Lidington, the new British Minister for Europe, equally welcomed the preliminary result saying “we applaud the determination of the Slovenian and Croatian Governments to move beyond historical disagreements by negotiating an amicable resolution outside EU accession negotiations.”

“As William Hague said in Sarajevo, Britain will be a committed and reliable partner in a sustained effort to put the countries of this region irreversibly on the path to joining the EU,” he said in a statement.

Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004 and is currently the only former Yugoslav state so far to have done so. With this result, Croatia will now hope to shortly begin accession negotiations and become the second former Yugoslav state to join the EU.

A small number of postal votes remain to be counted in Slovenia's referendum and final results are due on 29th June.

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It won't be winning any book prizes or be in such demand that copies fly off the shelves but the jailed former UKIP MEP Tom Wise, currently in prison after being convicted for fiddling his expenses, has pledged to continue the party’s tradition of ‘pulling no punches’ in his forthcoming book to be written upon his release later this month.

Wise is expected to be released from jail on 29th June having served just six months of a two-year sentence, which was handed down to him in November 2009 by Southwark Crown Court for false accounting and money laundering.

During that trial, the court heard how Mr Wise, now 62, boasted openly about “repatriating” money from the EU to Britain as he lodged his £3,000-a-month claims for office staff. But, paying his researcher only a fraction of the allowance, he channelled the rest into a secret bank account used to pay for shipments of fine wines and other personal expenditure.

The court then learnt that the former MEP for the East of England could have pocketed up to £180,000 had the suspicious claims not been exposed by the Sunday Telegraph in 2005.

It then emerged that Mr Wise later managed to fool senior European Parliament officials into clearing him of wrongdoing in an investigation with a series of lies about where the money had gone, the court heard.

However, as his then party leader Nigel Farage was due to give evidence against him, Mr Wise changed his plea to guilty and received his reduced sentence.

Mr Wise, who was described in court as a “rising star” in the party and who during his time in Brussels sat on the Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport committee, was forced to sit as an independent until the end of his term in office after the UKIP party withdrew the whip.

But now, upon his release he intends to pen a book which according to a close friend quoted by theparliament.com will “pull no punches and he will not hesitate to point the finger at those who were culpable in what has happened to him.”

I cannot help but wonder whether the book is in fact an autobiography since he surely bought this on himself with his fraudulent expenses claims.

But one thing for sure is that it will certainly not be well received by his old party; one UKIP MEP Gerard Batten confessed that even "if a book ever appears, I shall not be buying it.”

As for me, occupying the spot in my summer reading list reserved for an UK MEP EU-bashing will remain the book written by a certain Nigel Farage called ‘Fighting Bull’…

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Do you remember Galileo, the EU alternative to the USA's global navigation satellite system? Yes? Well, it needs more money...

Last week, on Monday 1st June, the European Parliament's Industry Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) organised a question and answer session with the European Commission to learn of current developments and the financial requirements of the Galileo project. From the informative discussion the message was clear: it is an important project but the funding is tough in such financial conditions.

Herbert Reul (EPP, DE), the committee's chair reminded the chamber that "economically and politically, investing in the completion of the Galileo system is a wise idea", and that it would be "unwise to abandon the project halfway trough, as more and more economic applications are based on space-based positioning, such as applications in the transport, agricultural or construction sector."

As it stands, the current allocation of funds is sufficient to construct the first batch of 18 satellites, but many say that 30 (27 plus three spares) are needed to guarantee global coverage to EU citizens.

In addition, they will need to be upgraded and maintained long-term, and as a result, the expected budget for these factors combined will reach some €750 million a year.

"The Commission must certainly pay attention to a professional handling of the financing of Galileo," Mr Reul warned, as "cost overruns in the order that we have seen in the past should absolutely be prevented."

Control centres are currently being built and the first satellites will be launched in 2011 with 18 satellites deployed by early 2014.

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As much as dislike eating my own words, the new Foreign Secretary William Hague (despite his euroscepticism) is actually doing some good in his new role, as when opening this afternoon’s debate on European Affairs, the first of the new session, he announced the creation of a new cabinet committee on Europe.

Mr Hague will naturally chair the new committee (with Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne as deputy chair) that will mean better coordination of government policy on Europe, with the Foreign Office (FCO) playing a more “central role”, because all policy surrounding Europe does not just fall into the perview of the FCO, it also has profound implications for other departments.

But at the same time, Mr Hague coupled this announcement with the warning that the coalition government will take a "more holistic approach to European affairs".

“It’s also our intention to approach European issues across Whitehall in a more coherent way,” he said before repeating that “fiscal consolidation” and “economic growth” would be the government’s top priorities in Europe.

“The priority for all of us is to rectify our budget problems and the weak economic growth,” he said. “Recent events in the Eurozone have exemplified the need for fiscal consolidation.”

He then again repeated his belief that stability in the Eurozone was vital for Britain’s national interest and said the government would seek an extension of the European single market and would press for better regulation – which in some cases would be lighter to appease the UK financial centre of the City.

The debate is billed to continue for the rest of the afternoon until 18.00GMT and it you can watch it via the BBC’s Democracy Live.

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The British High Representative of Foreign and Security Policy Catherine Ashton is looking for Special Representatives to take their place amongst her European External Action Service (EEAS). One of regions Baroness Ashdown is in need of a SR is Bosnia and the Balkans, and the rumours circulating are that the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, is her preferred choice.

But the name-touting of Lord Ashdown, who served as the international community’s overseer of Bosnia between 2002 and 2006, has already run into opposition from Germany, which is concerned about British domination of a new EU diplomatic corps and Lord Ashdown’s previous role in the war-torn Bosnia.

The job would involve drawing up and implementing a plan for the EU accession of the other Balkan nations – including Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo. Croatia is already on the path to EU membership and expected to join next year, while Slovenia is already a fully-fledged member.

Lord Ashdown, who has repeatedly stated his desire to get back onto the international stage and his support for a high-profile EU role in the region, has however declined to confirm or deny that is in the running for the job. In yesterday's Guardian he is quoted as commenting: “since I left the Balkans four years ago, there has been constant speculation about a Balkan envoy … Obviously I think it’s a good idea.”

It seems he also has many friends in powerful places with much support from the country’s new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, and notably the new foreign Secretary William Hague.

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