EUROPE'S political leaders will meet in Malta on Friday for the first summit of what could be one of the most tumultuous years ever for the European Union. The bloc will continue the process of mapping out how the continent best moves forward post-Brexit in what could be another highly uncertain election year with populist forces potentially making big gains across the continent, plus growing external opposition to Brussels, including from the Trump administration.

Some 60 years after the Treaty of Rome, which was one of the EU's founding treaties, European Council President Donald Tusk said this week that the challenges facing the EU are now "more dangerous than ever". He identified three key challenges "which have previously not occurred, at least not on such a scale" that the EU must tackle to survive, let alone thrive, going forward.

The first two dangers relate to the rise of anti-EU, nationalist sentiment across the continent, plus the "state of mind of pro- European elites" which Mr Tusk fears are now too subservient to "populist arguments as well as doubting in the fundamental values of liberal democracy". The EU chief is conscious here that, following Brexit, and Donald Trump's election to the White House, it is continental Europe which will provide a lodestar in 2017 for whether right-wing populism will continue to find fertile electoral ground, potentially changing the political complexion of the union in the process.