One of the worst kept secrets in Brussels is that Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel don’t exactly hit it off. The German chancellor is even-tempered, precise, methodical. The French president is passionate, impulsive and "an unguided human missile", to quote one diplomat who has seen him in action amd whose jaw has only just started to return to its normal position.

The areas of disagreement between Merkel and Sarkozy, the EU’s most important pair, start with monetary and exchange rate policy. He is scornful of the European Central Bank’s anti-inflation emphasis, but she dislikes his jabs at the ECB’s independence. They end with Turkey, where Sarkozy flatly opposes Turkish entry into the EU and Merkel, though not personally in favour, believes the EU should honour its pledge to Turkey to continue membership talks.

(more…)

As I watched the European Union’s leaders sign the Lisbon reform treaty on Thursday, my mind wandered back to that pleasant autumn day in Rome in October 2004 when many of these same leaders signed the constitutional treaty that was the present document’s ill-fated predecessor.

Italy’s prime minister at that time was Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media magnate. He had fought tooth and nail to make sure Rome was the city in which the constitutional treaty was signed. In fact, some said  this had been the only goal that he really felt passionate about when Italy held the EU presidency from July to December 2003.

(more…)

Trailing down to Strasbourg for the monthly meeting of the European parliament and Commission has its advantages. I am not referring to the non-stop Christmas drinks parties that spill into the lengthy corridors of the Tower of Babel, and carry on until the small hours in the bars of the agreeable French city..

Rather it is the occasional access to the power players that all have to make the same journey. On Tuesday I was just across the aisle from Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, and Joao Vale de Almeida, his suave chief of staff, on the flight from Brussels.

Having mentally kicked myself for never taking up Portuguese as they chatted to each other I relied on sight alone to glean the workings of Barroso’s mind. He sat down with a vast stack of papers.

(more…)

The Avenue Louise is the most elegant shopping district in Brussels, but these days you are just as likely there to run into the leader of some embattled former Soviet republic as the bejewelled wife of a Belgian millionaire.

At the Conrad Hotel (Ave. Louise 71), where a duplex suite with a kingsize bed for a couple on a romantic getaway costs €1,865 a night, I had an enlightening conversation on Thursday morning with Lado Gurgenidze, the new US-educated prime minister of Georgia.

(more…)

The thaw between Poland and Brussels has sent a chill down spines in Lithuania.

Donald Tusk, the new Polish premier, arrived at the European Commission and parliament on Tuesday to show that his country was back in the centre of Europe. The era of the Kaczynskis, “the terrible twins”, picking fights with Brussels, was over.

The fear in Vilnius is that he may stop picking fights with Russia, too, leaving the Baltic republics, which only recently threw off the Soviet yoke, alone in the ring with the bear. Talks on resolving the Russian blockade of Polish meat, which in turn have held up a new EU-Russia partnership agreement to Brussels’ ill-concealed annoyance, start next week.

(more…)