There’s a well deserved Parliamentary recess this week so it’s a quiet start domestically, but over in Brussels a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council on Monday is attended by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN/Arab League special envoy to Syria. Brahimi is set to update the Council on his efforts to broker a peace agreement and opposition leader Moaz al Khatib’s offer to the Syrian government to engage in talks, an offer which has so far gone unanswered.

The EU meeting coincides with a press briefing in Geneva by the Syria Commission of Inquiry as it presents its latest findings on the conflict to the UN Human Rights Council. The Commission’s last report, released in December last year, painted a picture of ‘unrelenting violence’ and continuing human rights and humanitarian law violations.

There’s a potential spanner in the works for EU thwarter David Cameron on Monday when MEPs begin a debate in the European Parliament on this month’s long-term budget agreement, which saw the first ever successfully proposed reduction in the European Union’s multi-annual budget. A failure by MEPs to agree to the Prime Minister’s much-vaunted €908bn budget limit for the seven-year period to 2020 would see the 2013 budget rolled over into next year and likely cause consternation in already skittish financial markets. European Council and Commission presidents Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso participate in the debate.