At one level it has been a privilege to attend the Danish Presidency Press Trip for the past four days. I’m the first blogger ever to have been allowed to attend, and hopefully not the last. But the whole experience leaves me feeling a little empty, although not quite for the reasons that may be immediately obvious.

Let’s start with what works well. The trip – from my point of view – was impeccably organised. Wifi in all venues, buses to get us everywhere, staff on hand to answer any questions we had. I’m waiting for the Foreign Ministry people to confirm the budget for the trip to me, but it will not be excessive for the journalists trip alone – beyond flight and hotel costs there were not too many other direct expenses. There was some pleasant food, but beyond that most of the events were either provided free, or the press people attended things that were happening anyway. As Jakob Alvi from the Danish Permanent Representation pointed out to me, this is only one of dozens of press visits that the Danish government supports during the Presidency and, for trade or tourism purposes, at other times too.

This then is a critique of a system, not a critique of the specific event I attended.

A key problem lies with the cosy yet dysfunctional relationship between the press, and the administration and politicians. Over the course of the four days we received on the record briefings from 9 ministers in the Danish administration: Margrethe Vestager, Villy Søvndal, Bjarne Corydon, Morten Bødskov, Morten Østergaard, Ole Sohn, Mette Gjerskov, Martin Lidegaard and Nicolai Wammen, and had off-the-record discussions with a few more at a dinner. In addition we heard speeches from Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Donald Tusk, Jerzy Buzek and José Manuel Barroso, and attended a press conference with Thorning and Barroso. We also heard from more than a dozen leaders of businesses of various sorts, with Claus Meyer (founder of Noma) the only one to truly stand out.

That sort of access is unprecedented. However it also seems to be rather useless.

The on the record briefings from ministers were remarkable mostly for their complete absence of content. 8 of the 9 ministers (Agriculture Minister Mette Bjerskov being the only exception) gave little more than simple summaries of the Presidency priorities. The Q&A sessions with the ministers were little better. Søvndal at least showed a little more passion and determination for some issues than others, and was willing to say so when he didn’t know the answers, and Wammen coined the phrase that this was the tap water (i.e. discount) Presidency. But sat writing this blog entry now I cannot recall a single thing Corydon, Bødskov, Østergaard, Sohn or Lidegaard said.

Oddly I don’t actually know who is wasting whose time here. We used up more than 10 hours of ministerial time – could these people have been doing something more useful? Yet conversely 60+ journalists sat and listened to hours of this. Could they have been doing something more worthwhile?

“Why do you bother listening to all of this?” I asked a veteran of a number of these press trips. “In Brussels we wouldn’t,” he said, “but here we’re the guests of the country holding the Presidency.” Why then, I asked, bother to come at all? “To make contacts,” he said, going on to say that these were made in the margins. But surely there is a more efficient way to achieve the same result?

There is also undoubtedly some educational aspect to the event. One correspondent I spoke to had only been in Copenhagen once before – for the UN Climate Negotiations – and was happy to use this trip to heal the scars from his previous visit. Many others had little knowledge of Danish politics and society beyond Forbrydelsen, one even raising the idea of making a ‘Danish politics 101′ presentation at the start of the trip. My knowledge of Denmark and Danish politics, and an excellent Twitter network giving me the gossip on the politicians we were meeting, meant I knew more than the average. But I am a politics nerd I suppose.

The press trip was timed to coincide with the joint meeting of the College of Commissioners and the Danish Government, and the opening ceremony of the Presidency. This was a gala concert at the DR Koncerthuset. The event was a mix of short speeches and classical music played by the DR orchestra, yet the audience was confined to the high and mighty of the Copenhagen political elite. The hall seats 1800 but it was only about a quarter were full. I’m not sure a classical music concert is something for mass public consumption, but here was an opportunity to show a slightly wider audience a little more of the spirit of the Presidency, and this was missed. Here Wammen’s notion of a discount Presidency was not much on show, with expensive canapés and ice sculptures.

Over glasses of wine after the opening one of the most interesting scenes of the trip was played out. Olli Rehn, dour and grey Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, was surrounded by a crowd of journalists. How? Why? It cannot be because he has anything interesting to say, can it? I expressed my surprise to one of the journalists afterwards. Rehn didn’t say anything new or interesting was the reply, but he’s a nice guy. We (meaning the Brussels correspondents) talk about football and go for dinner with him, I was told. I countered that his communications were disastrous and towards the outside world he looks ineffective. This was met with a shrug and a further defence of Rehn as an individual. Are these journalists too close to Rehn to be objective? Or am I – as an outsider – just too cruel? Conversely, I am told that many Brussels correspondents are not altogether enamoured by the High Representative for the EU’s Foreign Policy, and on that one I am with them.

The icing on the cake was today’s Press Conference with PM Thorning and Commission President Barroso. It took place at Bella Center, a 1970s conference centre on the windswept edge of Amager. Throne like chairs – occupied by less than 100 press – sloped up the cavernous room from the impeccable stage with a flower arrangement that must have cost more than I’m paid in a day. The two politicians arrived late and gave us 30 minutes of their time – initial introductions that more or less word for word what they had said the night before followed by just half a dozen questions.

As the howling wind made the Vestas wind turbine spin at speed outside Bella Center, the Presidency flags billowing in the wind below it, it was with a grim face that Thorning discussed today’s announcement that the very same Danish wind turbine company is laying off 2300 workers. No words from the politicians could counteract this very concrete bad news.

The best question at the press conference came from the FT’s Peter Spiegel. Directing his question to Barroso, he neatly connected the Commission President’s campaigns against authoritarianism in Portugal as a young politician with the ongoing constitutional problems in Hungary. Did Barroso, Spiegel asked, think that Viktor Orban as a politician represented European values? Barroso’s answer was a classic, vague fudge. He didn’t mention his own view of Orban at all and instead kept referring to legal process needing to take its course. His words ended up being weaker and more vague than the Commission’s statement on the matter from the day before.

“What did we learn from all that?” I asked one of the journalists at the end. “It’s always like that” he said. So we all pottered off to the cavernous press room to file pieces about what we had just heard, crouching over our laptops and trying to muster up something worthy to say, with every practical need covered except anything noteworthy to actually write about.

So that folks, is a Presidency Press Trip.

UPDATE 16 Jan – @SpiegelPeter has just tweeted:

@jonworth Saw your blog. Found it cheap and self-serving.

16.01.2012 06:45 via Twitter for BlackBerry®ReplyRetweetFavorite

@SpiegelPeter

Peter Spiegel

There are two candidates in the race already – Martin Schulz (thought to be odds-on, as the deal was that Jerzy Buzek would do the first half of the 2009-14 term and Schulz the second half) and British Tory Nirj Deva (who doesn’t have a hope, well, because he’s a British Tory).

The real issue here is how much threat is Diana Wallis to Schulz? While the latter was unanimously backed by the S&D Group as their candidate, I know he is not universally liked within the group (and I’ve expressed my discontent about him before). And if Schulz is not universally liked within the S&D, what about within the EPP who are supposed to back him now? Earlier this year there was an effort by the groups of the centre and right to tie up important fisheries reports to the exclusion of the centre left (although this was subsequently overturned) – will this determination be replicated when it comes to the decision for the Parliament’s top job?

I can’t read how all of this is going to play out – I just don’t know enough about the internal dynamics of the EPP. But Martin Schulz must be today just a little bit more nervous about his future prospects than he was last week.

Conversely, Martin Schulz is a nasty, tub-thumping, selfish, hectoring politician, motivated more by his desire to be President of the European Parliament than anything else as far as I can tell. I’ve expressed my dislike of the man in the past. Yet Schulz, the wronged party in the incident with Bloom, also once heckled a Dutch far right MEP Daniël van der Stoep, calling him a fascist, and was not asked to apologise and subsequently reprimanded in the same way by the President of the European Parliament. Video of that incident (plays from the correct point):

So what’s going on here?

Firstly, both of them are idiots, and behaved inappropriately. Calling others fascists, der Führer etc. in the chamber is offensive and unnecessary. However offensive Bloom, Schulz or van der Stoep are, nothing should prompt any politician to use those words.

Secondly, Schulz gets away with it because he represents the political mainstream and Bloom and van der Stoep do not. Essentially Schulz has more friends and gets treated differently. Just listen to Guy Verhofstadt’s comments backing Schulz. This plays right into the hands of the loopy folks on the political fringes – they seek to present the political mainstream as conspiring against them, and this incident looks like precisely that is happening. Jerzy Buzek, the essentially decent President of the EP, needs to make sure everyone is dealt with fairly and reasonably. Buzek, let’s not forget, was the EU politician who gave the most positive support for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo for example.

Thirdly, it’s much better to take apart Schulz with some humour and cunning, rather that resorting to Bloom’s xenophobia. He should take a leaf out of Danny Cohn Bendit’s book.

[UPDATE]
Laura Shields has written a post about the protagonists’ use of language – interesting thoughts, but I think she overestimates Bloom’s ability to think before he speaks!

Earlier this week Barack Obama prompted a bout of soul-searching by stating that he would not attend a EU-US summit pencilled in for May this year. At least it resolves who will first shake his hand or sit next to him – no-one.

Then today comes the news that Hillary Clinton called Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament, regarding SWIFT. Buzek even tweeted that he had spoken to Clinton, but the tweet has subsequently been deleted – screenshot of my retweet of it here. The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs nevertheless voted against an agreement today.

So what’s the reaction? How dare the USA try to influence the EU’s legislative process by applying pressure on the European Parliament! Normally accurate, blogger Julien Frisch is completely wrong on this one. What is to stop Hillary Clinton (or anyone else) trying to influence the European Parliament – providing we know about it?

Conversely the President of the European Commission and the High Rep for Foreign Policy of the EU should be doing the same towards Washington – proactively promoting the EU’s interests. That’s what having a stronger role in the world is about – and how often do we hear that advocated by the EU’s high level politicians? Plus if the EU had been a bit more forceful towards the USA from the start we would not have found ourselves in the messy predicament concerning SWIFT anyway where it looks like a one way street towards giving the USA data.

So on balance US-EU governmental relations don’t look too bad this week. Obama has rejected attendance at a bla-bla talking shop, and Clinton has realised that the European Parliament (and the legislation it passes) actually counts.

[UPDATE 5.2.10]
Daniel Bastiero, the Spanish journalist who managed to get the tweet out of Buzek has more on his blog about the story (Spanish original, Google translation here)

Statue at the EP - CC / Flickr

My discontent about the lack of choice about the future President of the European Commission is well known. But it seems – bizarrely – that the choice of the President of the European Parliament might actually become a bit more interesting. President of the EP is a largely symbolic role, chairing the sessions and with some external representation tasks. Perhaps the election intrigue is a manifestation of the old Henry Kissinger quote that “university European Parliament politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small”?

Anyway, so what’s going on? Essentially the President of the EP is usually a tie-up between the 2 main political groups in the Parliament, the EPP-ED and PSE. Each gets the Parliament President for about two and a half years of the five year parliamentary term. Josep Borrell, a socialist, preceeded Hans-Gert Pöttering, a christian democrat, in the current term.

For the 2009-2014 term the socialists want to put forward tub-thumper Martin Schulz, but as a German national he cannot follow Pöttering. So the EPP-ED will get the first call – if tradition is respected. Former Polish PM Jerzy Buzek was the most likely candidate, although now Silvio Berlusconi – with the additional backing of Alleanza Nationale in the EPP, want their own man – Mario Mauro. See this from Euractiv that explains the games.

Then there’s the overall issue of how the President should be selected and whether – shock horror(!) – the person to do the job should actually be a good candidate! Leader of the ALDE Group, Graham Watson, has put his hat in the ring, saying he will run to be President of the Parliament, and won’t tolerate the old carve up. I’ve met Watson a few times, and while I don’t agree with his policies all the time, I think he’s a sharp and interesting guy. He’s also received some backing from Borrell, and Polish MEP and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (who is from the same party as Buzek).

So let’s see what happens… The process will end up being opaque and tied up in the metaphorical smoke filled rooms, but at least there is a bit of discussion and a few candidates – more than can be said about the Commission at the moment.