Brussels - The European Union's 27 leaders head for a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday with two of their most cherished projects - institutional reform and climate change - in disarray. An ominously vague draft of the summit's joint conclusions, which was negotiated by diplomats and which is to serve as a basis for discussions among heads of state and government, offers little hope of a breakthrough.
Diplomats say that the most detailed argument is likely to be over the question of how much money the EU should give the world's poorer nations to help them mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The European Commission believes EU taxpayers should provide up to 15 billion euros (22.3 billion dollars) per year by 2020 to developing countries. But disagreements about how to divide that sum between member states have proved a formidable obstacle.
Sources close to the negotiations say leaders might yet reach a compromise on how to share out the bill, but that they are unlikely to give any indication of how big it should be.
Leaders will also have to find a way to convince the Czech Republic's eurosceptic president, Vaclav Klaus, to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, if the Czech constitutional court allows him to do so.
The Czech parliament has already approved the treaty, but Klaus has yet to sign it off. Officials in Brussels describe as "irrational" his demand forassurances that the treaty will not allow EU courts to challenge World War II-era laws which expelled ethnic Germans from the then Czechoslovakia.
As one senior EU diplomat put it just days ahead of the meeting: "Czech ratification is the 10,000-dollar question."
Leaders are expected to overcome Klaus's opposition by offering him an opt-out from the EU's charter of fundamental rights, which would be passed into law the next time the bloc signs a treaty.
There is a general sense of stalemate hovering around Brussels these days.
But the current economic crisis and what diplomats refer to wearily as "the Czech problem" are not solely to blame.
Analysts say that it also stems from the difficulties the EU's main driving forces, Germany and France, are having in forging a common vision about where the bloc should be heading.
Germany's recent absent-mindedness about EU affairs is partly justified by the fact that it has been engaged in a general election - the new coalition of Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats will make its international debut in Brussels.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, meanwhile, has been busy dealing with charges of nepotism amid the controversy over his son Jean.
"It is almost as if Germany and France want to build a stronger Europe, but don't quite know what to do with it," says Hugo Brady, an analyst at the London-based Centre for European Reform.
Experts also point to a lack of personal chemistry between Germany's no-nonsense chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France's flamboyant president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The two leaders have since raised expectations of a new beginning by staging a pre-summit meeting in Paris on Wednesday evening.
The hitherto lack of momentum has placed the EU's current presidency - Sweden - in an awkward position.
As if anticipating disappointment, a gloomy-looking Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden's prime minister, ruled out in a video interview the possibility that the summit would run into overtime.
Expectations have further been dampened by the fact that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi cancelled his presence in Brussels owing to scarlet fever.
EU leaders are clearly not bracing themselves for a make-or-break meeting, and there is already talk of an extraordinary summit taking place in November.
According to the EU's original plans, Thursday and Friday's meeting was meant to focus on whom leaders should pick for the two key posts being created by the Lisbon Treaty.
Tony Blair remains the frontrunner for the post of President of the European Council, a sort of EU secretary general. But Britain's former premier is been ostracised by the bloc's smaller member states, who fear that their concerns will be ignored by a superstar "Mr Europe" with a recognized stature in Washington and Beijing.
Such countries would rather prefer a low-profile moderator such as Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who also acts as the influential chairman of the 16-member Eurogroup. Currently an informal organization, it gains formal recognition under Lisbon.
There are plenty of names floating around for the second key post created by treaty, that of foreign policy high representative. These include the foreign ministers of Britain, Sweden and France, as well as the EU's current enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn of Finland.
Diplomats say that while leaders will certainly be sounding each other out about the new posts, no appointments will be made.
This is because Klaus is not allowed to sign the treaty until the Czech court rules on its legality - something it is not expected to do until Tuesday at the earliest.
