EPP heads of govt retreat to Belgian castle to discuss European Council

It’s a busy weekend in Brussels. Yesterday’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council cleared the path for today’s European Council/Eurozone Summit, while the General Affairs yesterday discussed (PDF) economic policy and finalized the EU positions for the G20 summit in Cannes in November and the COP17 climate conference in Durban in December.

Angela Merkel's badge is waiting for her
Source Flickr CC BY-NC-SA mounteulympus

Somewhere in between, 13 heads of state and government belonging to the European People’s Party (EPP), reinforced by José Manuel Barroso, Herman van Rompuy and Jerzy Buzek, took a retreat to a beautiful castle outside of Brussels to save the Euro over a decent dinner.

Journalists were waiting in front of the castle nervously as the first shaded limousines pulled into the driveway. One by one, heads of state and government got out of their cars and walked past the journalists to the castle entrance. Angela Merkel, Finland’s Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen and Austria’s Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger stopped to explain their expectancy of the summit, while Silvio Berlusconi put on a grin and ignored the journalists as his bodyguards walked him to the door. MEP Elmar Brok opened his passenger door alone and walked up to the castle by himself. By the time of his arrival, the journalists’ interest had waned and they were comparing their notes of the Merkel interview.

Your blogger had access to the advisors’ chamber, so over dinner I plugged into some interesting conversations. The advisors themselves were not fully aware of what was going on behind the closed doors of the meeting room, either. “Sometimes, very important progress is made in between the negotiations, in bilateral conversations in the hallway,” said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert. And after heads of government have negotiated a compromise among themselves, each of them returns home to win the approval of their Parliaments. “For those governments with a narrow majority, that can be quite a struggle,” Seibert said. Indeed, one reason for the postponement of the European Council to Wednesday is that Angela Merkel has not secured the approval of the German budget committee yet.

Throughout the dinner, buzz was high about the tête-à-tête between Sarkozy and Merkel after the EPP summit. Sarkozy did not participate in the summit but was due to arrive in Brussels later in the evening. According to media reports, however, the meeting only achieved little progress.

It seems that a lot of work remains as heads of government meet for the European Council today. And if the leaked conclusions prove to be true, there will not be an agreement on the recapitalization of the banks today.

MountEUlympus at the EPP Summit

In the footsteps of Julien Frisch, Joe Litobarski and Andrew Burgess, your humble blogger will cover the summit of the European People's Party (EPP), held this Saturday evening in preparation for the European Council on Sunday (and Wednesday).

Angela Merkel at the EPP Summit in June 2011
Source: Flickr CC BY europeanpeoplesparty

The EPP currently brings together 17 of the 27 European heads of state or government, among others Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Donald Tusk and Silvio Berlusconi. Discussions at the summit will mainly center around the Eurocrisis, which already brought one EPP government down last week (Iveta Radicová's liberal-conservative coalition in Slovakia). Will EU leaders, Merkel and Sarkozy most of all, be able to come to a sustainable agreement? Will they be able to produce a consistent solution that appeases the markets and brings back politicians' credibility? These are the questions that this blog will address at the EPP summit.

I will be live-tweeting directly from the summit (follow my account @mounteulympus or the hashtags #epp and #euco) and provide you with a round-up in the aftermath of the summit on this blog. You can send me your questions, comments and remarks by comment function, via Twitter or through the contact form, and I will try to address them at the summit.

The Hungarian Presidency's legacy: Bloggers allowed in the Council

Today is the final day of the Hungarian EU Presidency. From tomorrow, Poland will set the agenda and organize Council meetings for the remainder of 2011.

It is not my place to judge the overall performance of the Hungarian Presidency, but in one aspect it deserves a lot of praise. It was the first Presidency to allow bloggers into the Council meetings. Several times, bloggers Ronny Patz, Europasionaria and Litterbasket (Joe Litobarski) have reported directly from the Council, and in a handful of meetings with Brussels-based bloggers, the Presidency has made the inner workings of the Council more transparent (see a comprehensive blogtour by Mathew Lowry here).

Although it would seem a basic principle of democracy to let citizens attend a Council and ask questions to their politicians, earlier attempts at transparency achieved one thing most of all: it allowed lobbyists to monopolize the floor. With social media taking a more important place in the European policy debate, the Council is trying to give a greater space to European bloggers. In future, the Council's deliberations go, citizen bloggers should be allowed to request access to Council meetings, but it has to be safeguarded that they don't wear a lobbyist's hat. Much is still under negotiation, but after the Hungarian Presidency paved the way, hopes are high that bloggers could more regularly report from the Council.

We hope the Polish Presidency will be prepared to continue the work started by its predecessor. And we are highly thankful for the efforts of Gergely Polner and Hajdú Márton who devoted time and energy to European social media during the HU Presidency.

Update (19/07/2011): See coloredopinions for an interesting discussion on Blogging as a Wheat and Chessboard Problem

The taxpayer offers the European Council a €240m Easter egg

Sketch of the new Europa building/Source: Council

Rejoice, austerity-ridden peoples of Europe. The European Council will obtain a brand-new €240m building at the place of today's Residence Palace in the European district of Brussels. Lavishly designed and with a prominent "beer belly" or "egg" in its center, the new Europa building is intended to host the president of the European Council, the Council presidencies, delegations and the press.

After the 2004 enlargement, says the Council, more permanent office spaces is needed to accomodate new arrivals in Brussels. The European Council therefore decided in March 2004 to offer itself a new building and selected a proposal by the architects Philippe SAMYN & PARTNERS in September 2005. At the time, European leaders demanded that the the cost of the building remain below €240m.

Faced with a frowning Angela Merkel and a fuming David Cameron, angry about the overall cost, the timing of the publication and the amount of €100,000 spent on an advertising brochure, Eurocrats were unapologetic during the recent European Council: "This was decided years ago, before the crisis. It will cost more now to cancel than to complete. It's good value."

The Justus Lipsius Building where meetings of the European Council and the Council of Ministers currently take place has a surface of 137 960 m2 with another 27 130 m2 rented in other buildings. In April, June and October, Ministers shun Brussels to meet in the Kirchberg Conference Centre in Luxembourg.

Although all EU citizens have a reason to be angry about yet another European building whose conference rooms will remain vacant between sessions (the EP building in Strasbourg is vacant in three weeks of four, except for visiting school classes), the really tough bit concerns Belgium. The Belgian government kindly agreed in the name of its citizens to cover the entire cost of the building and only claim reimbursement when it hands the premises over to the EU in 2014.

Jean Quatremer: Barack Obama is the new president of the European Council

We thought that for once Europe had taken bold measures. We thought that for once Europeans had pulled themselves out of the swamp by their own hair. We thought that for once our leaders had taken far-sighted and wise decisions. But nobody has ever pulled himself out of a swamp by his own hair.

Now the Coulisses de Bruxelles revealed that the American president temporarily took over the job of the European Council President by personally convincing Merkel and Sarkozy to provide funds (and Zapatero to cut the Spanish budget). What is the purpose of paying a Herman Van Rompuy more salary than Barack Obama, if Barack Obama himself has to do Rompuy's job?

Angela Merkel just called the Euro-crisis the potentially greatest challenge since the signing of the Rome treaties in 1957. But even 60 years after the inception of European integration, Europe still cannot stand on its own feet. To quote Jean Quatremer: "Obama's intervention in European affairs shows to what degree the Union is defunct, due to the absence of powerful leaders who advance the common interest and not only their national interest" (my translation).

What a humiliation that is.

Happy Europe Day!

We are celebrating Europe and European integration which has tremendously benefitted the citizens in the Member States. Not only is the EU a guarantor of peace, it has also established a strong emotional interconnection of the European citizens compared with the pre-EEC days. It has made traveling across the borders absolutely self-evident for all of us. It has endowed us with a common currency and become a strong, value-based civilian-power force in international relations. Other regional organizations such as ASEAN and the African Union are looking at the EU with envy for the achievements that have been made in the integration of various policy fields. The EU is not only the largest economy in the world but also the largest donor of development aid and the global frontrunner in environmental policy.

While many things can and need to be criticized about the functioning of the EU, we should bear in mind that all of these achievements have created a great international and intercultural project that is unmatched in the world.

Having said that, it is of course necessary to point the finger at the failures of the EU at all times, because it seems that the fleet of Member States drifts away from one another as soon as the slightest breeze comes up. The most worrysome news for me in the last week has certainly been the loss of appreciation for the EU in the United States. Spiegel Online wrote that the incapacity of the EU to handle its crises (ash cloud, Greece) in a swift and consistent manner cause American policy-makers to increasingly shake their heads in disbelief. That should be perceived as a tremendous shame by all governments involved in the process! The Union that has just endorsed the creation of a European External Action Service discards wise and far-sighted coordination measures for short-term gains in regional elections (Angela Merkel in the case of Greece) and short-term economic gains for the airlines (although I agree with Julien Frisch that Eurocontrol handled the information of internet-savvy citizens rather well). Yet, the failure to coordinate more closely is a shame!

A strong navigator is needed, a navigator who focuses his eyes on the horizon while staying in constant communication with all of the vessels, paying attention that the demands of their crew are equally met. It is time this navigator started to emerge.


It so happens that the Euro Model United Nations Conference (EuroMUN) in Maastricht, one of the largest MUNs in Europe, coincided with Europe Day. In the assembly of the European Council, we focused on the hot topic of financial aid for Greece (me filling in as Greece at the last minute) and international speculation. Far-sighted, and with a view to protect the various crews, the Heads of State and Government "condemned" international speculation against the Euro, paved the way for a European Monetary Fund and a tobin tax to finance it and urged the Central Bank to acquire government bonds. I wished that the real European Council would sometimes take these kinds of bold decisions as well...



I would also like to make you aware of an article on my travel blog about recent measures in the US which may seriously impede future high school exchanges into the US (German, English as translated by google).

Due respects to Herman van Rompuy

The new President of the European Council is changing the tone. For the first time, only the heads of state and government were allowed at the table of the European Council. Foreign ministers were banned from the room, as were all political advisors. What used to be a big circle of delegations sitting opposite each other now became a very cosy setting. The heads of state didn't need their TV screens any more to see their counterparts as all 27 convened at the same table in the middle of the room, writes Le Monde. It probably goes too far to say that Herman van Rompuy assembled his "cabinet" for the first time, but the new Council President has definitely made an impression on the country leaders.

His first tones are absolutely pro-European. Van Rompuy sees himself as a federalist, not shy of using the "f-word". In his speech at the dinner on Thursday, he clarified that he sees the European Council as a working institution, not a talking institution. "We have to focus on taking political decisions rather than our traditional conclusions", he said (my translation).

Next Tuesday, van Rompuy will fly to Spain to talk to Zapatero about the Spanish Council presidency - and to make it clear that he is in charge now, according to Le Monde.

My dear hope is that Van Rompuy will continue on this way and disprove his critics. Many thought he was too diplomatic and would not take position. Now, he will be judged by his achievements. Let us hope for the best!