Brussels blog

The German presidency of the EU will be remembered for the deal on fighting climate change and the outline agreement on a replacement for the constitution.

But aides to European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso’s speak of another less remarked upon achievement of Angela Merkel during her stint in the hotseat: the development and delivery of a tough European line towards Vladimir Putin – epitomised at the fractious Samara summit in Russia.

After years of disunity and fawning by Gerhard Schroder, Ms Merkel’s predecessor, and Jacques Chirac, the former French president, Europe now has a set of leaders prepared to be frank with Moscow. Nicolas Sarkozy, whose family hail from Hungary, and Gordon Brown are not starry-eyed about Putin.

Just in case you know George Parker, I am a student. And as you may have guessed, I am not George Parker. I am Brian Parker, George’s youngest brother, and for the last 4 days I’ve been doing work experience here in Brussels with George, learning about the typical week of a journalist, which is, surprisingly if I’m honest, interesting. Oh, and I’m 14, so cut me some slack.

While my first day was certainly fun, I wasn’t exactly eased into things. My day began by attending the EU commission’s mid-day briefing (it seemed like a big thing at the time) and followed by lunch with an ambassador, though to be on the safe side I’m not saying which one. While I have since come to realise that I could learn to love a job that counts four-course meals as ‘work’, at the time all I could do was worry. A lot.

Though I had read up on as much about the EU as I possibly could before coming to Brussels, the briefing still went way over my head. Possibly because the speakers were using what I’ve generally heard referred to as technobabble. Probably because I was still thinking about the upcoming lunch with a person who, though not famous, was, certainly important.

Nicolas Sarkozy used the French election campaign to resurrect the old whine about "fiscal and social dumping": the idea that impoverished eastern European countries are undercutting companies in the west through lower tax rates and poor working conditions.

There are at least three good reasons why the French president should stop stoking those fears. First, there is scant evidence that jobs are really being "delocalised" to low-cost destinations in the east in large numbers. Such cases that exist are usually well publicised precisely because they are so rare.

Second, Mr Sarkozy is not going to get anywhere in his campaign to force eastern countries to put up their tax rates (like Slovakia’s 19 per cent flat tax). These countries do not have France’s excellent public services or transport systems and have to compete somehow. Tax is a national issue, not a matter for the EU or Paris.

Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank chief, won some grudging admiration from trade union bosses in Seville after giving a typically urbane explanation of why workers had to keep their pay claims down for the sake of the economy.

Mr Trichet argued at the European Trade Union Confederation’s four-yearly congress that low pay rises equalled low inflation, equalled stability, equalled more opportunities for the comrades’ unemployed brethren. "He was pretty good," admitted one veteran union baron.

If he had not been plausible he might have been given a much tougher time during a panel debate with senior union leaders I happened to be chairing. Because workers feel it is time they got their share of what has so far been almost a "payless recovery".

Estonia’s problem may be about to become Europe’s problem. The Russian outrage sparked by the Baltic state’s decision to remove a Soviet war memorial from Tallinn city centre could have wider ramifications for the whole of the EU.

The rowdy demonstrations outside Estonia’s embassy in Moscow, backed by vitriolic comments in the Russian media, have been worrying enough for diplomatic families to be sent home out of harms way.

Estonia, as an EU member, rightly expects support from the rest of the Union. On Wednesday Germany, holder of the EU presidency, insisted that Moscow respects its obligations to protect embassies, diplomatic staff and their families.

In the big power centres of Europe, there was a sigh of relief on Sunday as Nicolas Sarkozy emerged unscathed from his "cowboy" photo-op in the Carmargue and with a healthy lead in the first round of the presidential elections.

Although Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain’s socialist prime minister, might hope Segolene Royal wins (to replace his old quasi-socialist chum Jacques Chirac) most of the rest of Europe’s big leaders would have voted for Sarko.

That includes Angela Merkel, German chancellor, Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, and British "socialists" Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, neither of whom have even met their comrade Ms Royal.

Is fraud endemic in the European institutions? You might think so, reading the coverage of the revelations that three Italians have been arrested in a multi-milllion euro case involving bribery and forgery involving public tenders for EU buildings overseas.

The allegations of fraud lasting more than 10 years are shocking, and have been presented in some media as the latest manifestation of a sickness at the heart of the European Union. While the particulars of the case are grim, I’m not sure the problem is as chronic as some believe.

Before I’m accused of being a Brussels apologist, could I plead that I was the journalist whose interview with Marta Andreasen, the sacked EU chief accountant, put her story on the front page of the FT and helped to establish her as a eurosceptic martyr? My colleague, Tobias Buck, broke the Eurostat fraud scandal.

José Manuel Barroso raised a few titters in Berlin at the weekend with his assertion that "size matters" – a reference to the fact that the 480m people of the European Union made it a big player in the world.

I took away from the EU summit in Berlin a different impression: the little things matter. Strip away the speechifying and the Berlin declaration – a worthy enough attempt to mark the Union’s 50th birthday – and what will linger from the summit was the fact that 27 European leaders (and their spouses) actually seemed to have a good time.

That may sound trivial, but sometimes European Union leaders spend so much time slagging off Brussels or other national leaders that they forget that they are in this together, they have things in common, and they need to make it work.