Whether its economic strife, global warming or peace in the Middle East, European nations have a long list of grievances to raise with the new US president, after troubles with the Bush administration.

The following are the main, recent bones of contention between Brussels and Washington facing Barack Obama, who defeated Republican rival John McCain in Tuesday`s election, when he takes office on January 20:

With a recession swelling on this side of the Atlantic, Europe wants to push Obama to accept an accelerated timetable for international talks to ensure that the crisis doesn`t result in mass layoffs or eat into purchasing power.

`We need to change the current crisis into a new opportunity. We need a new deal for a new world,` EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday.

`I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the United States of America will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal.`

CLIMATE CHANGE: European countries have tried for months to encourage the United States, which has not ratified the Kyoto climate change protocol, to help reach a binding international agreement on cutting emissions of the gases that cause global warming, to be sealed at talks in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The EU has pledged to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020 -- 30 percent if other world polluters will match it -- compared to levels in 1990. But its efforts may be watered down by the financial crisis.

MIDDLE EAST: The EU has often felt its mediation efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were undermined by the White House during the Bush years. The Annapolis conference, called without wide consultation, on the Middle East in December 2007 has been raised as an example.

Given Washington`s privileged relations with Israel, the bloc will be hoping for more cooperation from the new US president.

IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS: The EU has been waiting for Washington to play a bigger role in this thorny dossier for more than two years. A small step was made in July when a US envoy took part in talks between the top EU and Iranian negotiators. But the 27-nation bloc thinks more can and should be done to convince Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.

NEW `MULTILATERALISM`: Europe will be hoping to see a return to the international system, notably the United Nations, after the Bush administration decided to go outside it in the war on Iraq.

`Unilateral decisions on resolving the future of the world, or pretending to resolve it, will be more difficult to take` with this US election, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday.

Kouchner said the United States `will remain a great country,` but he underlined that `the European Union has become more resolute.`