That Brussels slows down during August is well known. Though European Commission spokespeople repeatedly stress that the EU’s executive arm remains hard at work – especially this year – anyone strolling through the corridors of its Berlaymont headquarters can see there are more than a few people out of the office.
Now in the age of social media, it might be a bit easier to establish who is working and when. To wit: of the eight EU commissioners who regularly use Twitter, four of them have gone completely quiet for the whole month of August, with another commissioner managing only one entry.
All told, the group have tweeted 23 times in as many days. That’s less than a tenth of the usual Twitter activity. In June, for instance, the eight tweeters managed 270 messages, including retweets, between them.
A breakdown of Twitter summer stats after the jump. Read more






Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on