Even before any new coalition or understanding is set up here between Conservatives and Lib Dems and/or anyone else, the awful reality of European Union processes intrudes.

The Guardian makes a crude lunge to create divisions right from the start:

Tory-Lib Dem coalition threatened by secret hardline memo on Europe

• Draft letter by William Hague sets out tough stance on EU
• Leak follows leaders’ ‘constructive, amicable’ meeting

Of course the so-called letter by William Hague is not (not) by William Hague at all, but a draft cranked up by some senior civil servants before the election and the subsequent coalition discussions. Pathetic. 

Meanwhile is some sort of outlandish Brussels power-play happening today to try to save the Eurozone – partly at the expense of countries not in it?

Yes, according to the Telegraph:

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will fly to Brussels for the meeting after promising to keep George Osborne and Vince Cable, his Tory and Lib Dem counterparts, informed. EU finance ministers have been given the deadline of midnight tonight to agree the highly sensitive but rushed proposals to protect the single currency from financial turbulence from the Greek debt crisis.

“When the markets reopen Monday we will have in place a mechanism to defend the euro,” said President Sarkozy yesterday. “This is a full-scale mobilisation.”

Euro-zone leaders are attempting to get round objections from countries such as Britain by invoking Article 122 of the Lisbon Treaty, intended to enable a collective response to natural disasters. This does not need unanimous agreement.

By doing so, Mr Sarkozy has ensured a speedy confrontation with a new British prime minister and other leaders of non-euro currency countries. All 27 EU finance ministers must be present, but because decision will be taken by qualified majority vote, the 16 euro zone leaders can ensure its passage.

It is hard to see this being accepted by non-Eurozone members, even if it is true that it is planned, or at least contemplated. The arrangement would be open to evident legal challenges, plus it would not work in terms of restoring confidence if it promptly led to a massive new row:

British exposure to liabilities created by a bail-out under the scheme would amount to around 10 per cent of the total loan. If a country failed to repay, the cost to Britain would be ¤10 billion (£8.6 billion) for every ¤100 billion on which it defaulted.

The scheme will present an immediate dilemma for an incoming Conservative government. A bail-out would increase British liabilities and debt at a time when Mr Cameron would be seeking to restrain spending.

Refusal to lend the money would plunge a Tory prime minister, overseeing a coalition or minority government, into a damaging conflict with the EU.

Maybe more likely is an ad hoc arrangement whereunder the Eurozone EU members use this mechanism but the non-Eurozone members are not bound by it – how could they be, Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) or not?

It would be insane, let alone unacceptable, for non-Eurozone countries to take on responsibilities for Eurozone problems unless they were positively ready to do so in their own interests.

A QMV-based decision taken in the face of those countries’ strong and real objections could be ruinous for all concerned (Note: which of course does not mean that it won’t happen).

The point is this.

Every day swarms of EU norms and issues and problems surge through Whitehall. There are centralised mechanisms to try to keep tabs on it all. Our brilliant Ambasador in Brussels Sir Kim Darroch comes back to London once a week for a high-level officials’ meeting aimed at keeping an eye on EU business and looking ahead to how serious disagreements may be managed.

Almost any one of these issues has the potential to cause political trouble if leaked, as this footling Guardian non-letter has been leaked. Enough civil servants will have Lib Dem sympathies to be happy to embarrass the Conservatives by such leaks, just as some Eurosceptic civil servants will be keen to discredit the Lib Dems. And each side will have its schemeing SpAds.

Keeping a grip on all this may well in practice be among the hardest practical tasks facing any coalition, whose respective party leaders do have very different instincts about what the EU should be doing and the UK’s role in it..

That said, if there is one thing the Lib Dems will not relish it will be a row with the Conservatives over an EU issue where the Conservatives want ‘less EU’ and the Lib Dems incline to ‘more EU’.

If a coalition government falls on that score forcing a new election, the Conservatives will mop up large numbers of UKIP voters (whose votes probably cost the Conservatives a slam-dunk win this time round) and cruise home in a majority.