  We present a study of the structure, the electric resistivity, the magnetic
susceptibility, and the thermal expansion of La$_{1-x}$Eu$_x$CoO$_3$. LaCoO$_3$
shows a temperature-induced spin-state transition around 100 K and a
metal-insulator transition around 500 K. Partial substitution of La$^{3+}$ by
the smaller Eu$^{3+}$ causes chemical pressure and leads to a drastic increase
of the spin gap from about 190 K in LaCoO$_3$ to about 2000 K in EuCoO$_3$, so
that the spin-state transition is shifted to much higher temperatures. A
combined analysis of thermal expansion and susceptibility gives evidence that
the spin-state transition has to be attributed to a population of an
intermediate-spin state with orbital order for $x<0.5$ and without orbital
order for larger $x$. In contrast to the spin-state transition, the
metal-insulator transition is shifted only moderately to higher temperatures
with increasing Eu content, showing that the metal-insulator transition occurs
independently from the spin-state distribution of the Co$^{3+}$ ions. Around
the metal-insulator transition the magnetic susceptibility shows a similar
increase for all $x$ and approaches a doping-independent value around 1000 K
indicating that well above the metal-insulator transition the same spin state
is approached for all $x$.
