9 thoughts on “So that was a Presidency Press Trip. I’m feeling rather empty.”

1. Sounds dismal. Or perhaps it’s “grandeur and misery” as the French used to say..

2. In other words, it’s a ritual: the priests might have turned to face the congregation, but they’re still reciting rote lessons in Latin…
   I think you are too cruel about Rehn: I don’t think I’m alone in considering his hesitant delivery a genuine indication of his sincerity.

3. Thanks, Jon, for a very insightful piece! But how could it have been done differently? Certainly, one can’t force Barroso or anybody else to be less bureaucratic in their language or to be bold, critical and imaginative.
   It sounds as if everything has been elite-dominated but that’s often the case in Brussels and everywhere else. Can anything be done to change it when even most journalist are not outside the bubble?

4. @Hugh – I don’t doubt Rehn’s sincerity. I doubt his judgment and decision making ability!
   @European Citizen – I don’t know how it could be done differently. These issues are ones about the very nature of representative democracy and the press. I suppose I could have asked some odd question at the Press Conference (about whether the Commission will investigate Google over its integration of Google+ into search results for example) – maybe that’s the way? Use the power of the unexpected?

5. @Jon I often feel speaking to Rehn or the Commission in general on eurozone crisis is pointless. They don’t make the decisions. The EU’s leaders come together every six weeks, achieve some caffeine-fueled pseudo-compromise in the wee hours of the morn, then vanish. That leaves Barroso, Rehn & co to polish the turd for the markets and public opinion.

   They are the wrong people to ask they are not decision-makers but facilitators. Really the people who SHOULD be giving answers to the public is Merkozy’s fictitious spokesperson and the ECB president.

6. Looky there, premier Barroso of the undemocratic Eurosoviet Union’s politburo was there. No doubt argueing that the wealth-destroying Euro is a great success (it has been for the rich and the bankers, not for anyone else though).

7. Well, Jon, your post made me remember the ending of the movie Burn after reading

   See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQQdSwFgSec&feature=youtube_gdata_player

8. I think the point is that the rotating presidency is an enormous bluff…

   Anyway, Jon perhaps you already know that, but at Stronger Europe they are going to start a campaign for a directly elected European President.
   It remembered me your campaign of many years ago about “the telephone number for calling Europe”, how it was exactly, I can’t remember anymore the name in details, but I remember the initiative! I tried to dig out the website but I wasn’t able to do that!
   Well, I think now the time is much more “ripened” than those days, maybe this time it could work! What do you think?

9. Matches my experience – great promises of unique access… but what’s the good of all that if there’s nothing there to access?
   These events are a farce supposed to give journalists the impression that they’ve done their job. The politicians involved are primed not to reveal anything, or answer any potentially controversial (and thus interesting) questions.
   A few months back I met Barroso in Denmark. Journalists from all major Danish media were present, but we all had to submit our questions in advance. So the questions Barroso got were at the investigative level of “what are the three things you like best about Denmark?”
   I did ask a question different from the one I submitted, and was promptly told that I mustn’t do that in the future if I want to be welcome on the premises again.