I wrote last week about a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the EU that was canceled as a result of the ash cloud hovering over miles and miles of European airspace. The end of the airspace disaster is nigh, but the effects of the eruption are still being felt. Here's a rundown of how the political inner workings of Europe have been jarred by the plume.

• Norwegian Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg was stranded in New York last week, but was said to be using his new iPad to complete his governing duties from abroad.
• There probably won’t be enough Members of the European Parliament present in Brussels to reach the quota necessary to vote on issues at today’s parliament session, which leaves many questioning how dedicated to European causes the parliamentarians actually are. “If they held the votes by written procedure, it would set a dangerous precedent. None of them would ever come to parliament anymore,” one EU official joked, according to EUObserver.
• The funeral of former Polish President Leah Kaczynski, who recently died in a plane crash, was scarcely attended by world leaders. President Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Vatican Cardinal were just a few absent figures.
• A number of EU finance ministers were absent from a meeting in Madrid on Friday that had been planned to discuss the Greek bailout.
• Angela Merkel’s flight from the US back to Germany was diverted, and a scheduled 12-hour flight became a weekend-long expedition through Grand Forks, North Dakota and Lisbon, Portugal by way of the Iberian Peninsula.
• The Europeans are already nervous as to how the airport closures might affect the European economy, fearing a potential long-term impact or a deepening of the recession.

Luckily, the average European can see the silver lining of the ash cloud in the form of leisure time.