On a spring evening, a group of the world’s most powerful policymakers sat down to dinner at 501 Pennsylvania Avenue. The building, in the heart of the US government district, is a blend of modernist and neo-classical styles termed playful by some architecture critics. But the subject under discussion was deadly earnest: how to save Europe’s monetary union.
It has long been apparent that presidents of the European Commission secretly aspire to being treated like presidents of the US. I remember being present in the Commission press room, when Romano Prodi – the Commission president who preceded José Manuel Barroso – came to speak to the journalists. Prodi’s press secretary, presumably acting under instructions, announced loudly – “Ladies and Gentlemen, the president.” I was sitting in the front row and burst out laughing, and got a dirty look for my pains. I really wasn’t trying to be rude. It was just a genuinely ludicrous moment.
The Brussels blog is taking a break over the holiday season and will return in the European autumn.
Thanks for your comments and for your readership.
As the EU prepares for its summit at the end of the week, the FT’s senior foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman chairs a debate with Mats Persson of Open Europe and Charles Grant of the Centre for European Economic Reform. They discuss the tensions between France and Germany over the southern European members’ debt crisis, and the call for greater budget scrutiny, which the UK is questioning.
FT economics editor Chris Giles analyses the joint EU and IMF intervention to restore confidence to European banks and investors, at www.ft.com/eurescue
In this FT video, Victor Mallet, Madrid bureau chief, follows the migrant trail from Tangiers, north Morocco, to an immigration camp in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and across the mouth of the Mediterranean to southern Spain.
He sees how the regions’ economic ties and the financial crisis have shaped the lives of millions of migrants.
From Gideon Rachman’s blog
When the euro was launched in 1999, the British were constantly being warned that if they refused to join the European single currency, they would eventually find themselves marginalised within the European Union. The Brits scoffed at this notion. But it seems to be true. A desperate deal to extricate the euro-zone from the Greek crisis is currently being hammered out, a few floors above where I’m sitting, here in the gloomy Justus Lipsius building in Brussels. But the British are essentially irrelevant to the negotiations. And happy to be.
Greek shipping has enjoyed a surprisingly good year. But there are difficult times ahead for an industry that faces increased competition and dangerous levels of overcapacity.
Solving Greece’s current debt crisis is just the start of fixing the economy.
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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.
Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC. 
Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.
Stanley Pignal is Brussels correspondent for the Financial Times, covering EU justice, home affairs, social developments, telecoms and the Benelux region. He joined the bureau in January 2009, having previously worked for the FT as a corporate reporter in London. 
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Across the globe: Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on The World blog.
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