October 11, 2006
On the road again
Everybody knows that one of the EU’s idiocies is the requirement that the European parliament has homes in Brussels and Strasbourg and is required by treaty law to commute between the two.
Less known is the bizarre requirement that in three months of the year - April, June and October - all EU ministerial meetings have to take place in Luxembourg.
Thus with a heavy heart, the diplomatic and media circus descended on a corrugated iron shed on a Luxembourg industrial estate for the monthly Ecofin council of finance ministers, braving irregular air connections or the permanent roadworks on the motorway from Brussels.
But this time several things brightened the day. The first - the mist rising like gossamer off the green Ardennes valleys - need not detain readers long, especially if they are hoping for some serious economic analysis.
The second was the magnificent understatement of Hungarian finance minister Janos Veres, who told colleagues that the state of his country’s dire public finances had been "a matter of considerable public debate" in recent days.
That is one way of describing the demonstrations in Budapest city centre following the admission of Ferenc Gyrucsany, Hungarian prime minister, that he lied in the morning and evening to get re-elected.
Then there was Joaquin Almunia, EU monetary affairs commissioner, privately rebuking Greece for its announcement that its GDP was 25 per cent higher than was previously thought, including a provision for the earnings of prostitutes and money launderers.
Mr Almunia’s reference in a leaked letter to Greece’s "particular history on statistical data revisions" was another triumph of understatement. Athens notoriously gave faulty figures for years, disguising the scale of its budget deficit, allowing it to join the euro.
And finally there was the sight of Anders Borg, Sweden’s youthful new finance minister, making his Ecofin debut, and becoming - probably - the first member of this exclusive club to sport an earring and pony-tail.
George Parker
