THIS WEEK offers a weekly snapshot of the key developments in Brussels and across Europe over the next seven days, published every Monday morning.

After the flurry of an EU summit and a European Parliament plenary session, this week brings a relative calm after the storm to the institutions. 

Eurogroup and EU finance ministers will meet on Monday (16 February) and are expected to discuss the international role for the euro, potentially looking at ways to increase the euro’s use as a reserve currency and safe haven for countries worried by the volatility of the US dollar. 

They are also set to give the green light for Finnish civil servant Tuomas Saarenheimo to have another two years at the helm of Economic and Financial Council, a slightly obscure title but which has been one of the most influential jobs in Brussels, coordinating the work of EU finance ministers. 

Trade ministers will then hold an informal meeting in Nicosia on Friday (19 February), with an agenda that is set to include what to do about the trade deal with Mercosur, specifically whether the EU Commission should move to provisionally apply the trade pact pending its ratification by the parliament.  

Though EU leaders signed a draft trade deal with India in January, other negotiations are ongoing. Chief among them will be a fifth round of trade talks with the United Arab Emirates in the coming weeks. 

Macron in India

India will also host French president Emmanuel Macron on a three day state visit starting on Tuesday (17 February). Aside from the trade deal, which is set to boost French exports of pharmaceuticals and vehicles, two of the industries to benefit most, defence and security cooperation is likely to be high on the agenda for Macron and Indian premier Narendra Modi. 

Alongside the trade pact sits an agreement on defence that will open up the EU’s defence procurement market to Indian firms. It is also likely to mean more joint maritime operations between the EU and India. 

‘Board of Peace’ inauguration

In Washington, meanwhile, president Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is due to meet for the first time on Thursday, without any EU representatives in the room.  

At the Munich Security Conference last Friday, Italy and Poland, two countries with conservative governments who have had better relations than most with the Trump administration, turned down invitations to becoming Peace Board members. 

Widely dismissed as a vanity exercise and part of the US president’s campaign for a Nobel peace prize, the Peace Board looks like an obvious challenge to the cash-starved United Nations, a charge that Trump has denied. 

Membership of the Peace Board comes at a cost of $1bn [€840m] per head. 

Rubio in Budapest

Viktor Orban’s government in Hungary is arguably the keenest ally of Trump. Orban will roll out the red carpet for US secretary of state Marco Rubio, who visits Hungary on Monday (16 February), potentially with the offer of an invitation to join the Peace Board. 

Elsewhere stateside, EU lawmakers will have a watching brief on a Los Angeles courtroom where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is due to testify on Wednesday in a landmark trial on the impact of social media on young people. 

Other social media oligarchs including Snap boss Evan Spiegel and Instagram’s Adam Mosseri have also been summoned to give testimony in a trial that could have huge implications for social media regulation in the EU. 

For the parliament, meanwhile, the week will bring more air miles for MEPs. Defence committee members head for Poland and the Czech Republic, while the international trade committee is bound for the Philippines, another state currently in trade talks with the EU. 

Officials have targeted 2027 for an agreement, and a fifth round of bilateral talks is expected to be held in Brussels in March. 

The foreign affairs committee, for its part, is bound for EU candidate countries Montenegro and Albania.