One may think the world did not break off for summer. There was fighting in Ukraine, terrible fighting in Gaza, Ebola broke out of its narrow confines plus assorted other smaller issues.

Nevertheless, the leaders of Europe broke off for summer and will now be meeting, unusually in late August, on Saturday at an extraordinary Council.

Formally, the reason for this meeting is to draw up the other main appointments to the Commission which an earlier meeting in July could not come to an agreement about. As we report in this issue, it may well be that the European leaders will not agree on all the nominations that must be done but only on a replacement for Catherine Ashton as the EU foreign affairs chief and for Herman Van Rompuy as Council president.

Normally, EU council meetings come very well-prepared and any differences are often smoothed out by previous meetings of underlings. But there are some exceptions to this rule: whenever the council is to discuss financial matters, the assignation of an EU agency or nominations to important posts.

In this case, it is the last just named case. In particular, Italy’s hasty prime minister Matteo Renzi nominated Federica Mogherini, the young foreign minister, to replace Catherine Ashton.

The July Council broke up before the issue could be put to a vote because it was clear there was a core of northern countries who were dead set against Mogherini’s choice because she is young and inexperienced and also because she, and her government as well, were perceived to be soft on Russia at a time when Russia was annexing Crimea and fomenting instability in Ukraine.

Since then many negotiations have taken place and one possible line of negotiations has been that Mogherini will be accepted as long as Poland’s Prime Minister Tusk is chosen to succeed Van Rompuy.

Things however have a knack of not quite turning out as planned on paper. We shall see on Saturday.

If and once that hurdle is over, the EU leaders will move to the next step which is to confirm the new Commission before it is subjected to the European Parliament scrutiny and can begin to function.

Malta has already nominated veteran politician and minister Karmenu Vella who, at 64, would be the most senior member of the Commission alongside the Spanish Miguel Arias Canete.

But what is slightly worrying at this point is that while according to a study by Dods Monitoring, Mr Vella is one of the few designate Commissioners who is still without a portfolio coming his way.

Of course, this may be a straw in the wind but then one must never forget that Malta, as the smallest Member State, many times gets forgotten by the rest.

These passages require much diplomacy, finesse and savoir faire, apart, of course, of sheer competence in the task to be set in front of the designate Commissioner.