To the 23 official languages of the European Union can be added a 24th – Silviospeak.
Yes, Berlusconi is back and once again turning heads and headlines across Europe.
The incoming Italian premier has yet to form a government but has already irked Brussels on two issues: his defence of lossmaking airline Alitalia and the nomination of a Italy’s European commissioner.
The billionaire businessman helped wreck talks to sell Alitalia to Air France/KLM by holding out the prospect of an Italian takeover. Now, if local businessmen do not stump up the cash, he could just nationalise it, he said on Tuesday.
He invented a new word – “zignare” - to describe the hectoring of the Commission, which is anxious to ensure that the airline does not receive any more government subsidies, disadvantaging its competitors.
“If they continue hectoring, we could take a decision in which Alitalia could be bought by the state - by the state railway,” Berlusconi told a news conference. “It’s a threat, not a decision.” Some suspect it may also be a joke since the railway lacks the resources to take on the airline.
Jacques Barrot, the EU transport commissioner, has expressed doubts over whether an emergency 300m government loan complied with state aid rules. The Commission on Tuesday said that nationalisation would not pose a problem as long as the state did not pay above market rates for the 50.1 per cent of Alitalia it did not own. Given the lack of private buyers a market rate could be difficult to gauge.
Italy gave Jose Manuel Barroso, Commission president, a further headache on Tuesday when Franco Frattini, its commissioner, asked for his leave of absence to be extended until May 15. He took time off to campaign with Berlusconi and is expected to become Rome’s foreign minister.
Barroso last week said that if he resigned Italy would lose the sensitive justice and home affairs post, which temporary fill-in Barrot would retain. The new Italian would take Barrot’s transport portfolio. Rocco Buttiglione, Berlusconi’s last pick, (cd xref to beeb or our story) had to withdraw in 2004 after offending the European parliament with remarks about homosexuality and the role of women.
Patience with Italy is strained in Brussels. After his time spent with Berlusconi, it might be wise for Frattini not to return.

Who will feature in the next European Commission, to take office in 2009?

Well, for starters, it is widely thought that José Manuel Barroso wants a second term running the show. So how does the Portuguese liberal re-apply for his own job?

A first task, as one diplomat told me, is for Barroso to leave a legacy from his existing term in office. Prodi, the previous president, oversaw the “big bang” enlargement of the EU to take in 10, mostly ex-Communist member states. Delors’ crowning achievement was the creation of the single market. Will Barroso’s legacy be his controversial legislative efforts to counter climate change?

Barroso was appointed to his job in 2004 after emerging as a compromise candidate, and many assume that Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown, the current crop of leaders in big EU power centres, will continue to back him.

But is that enough? He’ll certainly help his cause by bolstering his “social” credentials. After all, Barroso has faced persistent claims that he’s failed to deliver enough in this area - see this open letter from Martin Schulz, leader of the socialists in the European parliament. So it’s interesting to learn that the Commission plans to unveil a big “Social Agenda Plus” package in June.

Barroso must surely still be haunted by the mess that marked the start of his administration in 2004, when he was forced to withdraw his original team rather than it face certain rejection by members of the parliament. Underlining that his is a social Commission, and that he is a leader for all, would certainly help his cause in the chamber and beyond.

A colleague visited recently from the FT’s London mothership, and a few of us took him out to sample some hearty Belgian fare.

Over his beer and stoemp (bangers and mash, Belgian-style) he asked who in the Brussels machine was the ultimate dinner party guest. A member of the European parliament, a national ambassador to the EU, or a European commissioner?

The consensus was that with Brussels dancing to the beat of the European Commission (the EU executive), commissioners were at the top of the pecking order.

Granted, not all commissioners’ roles are equal. Holding the EU education and training portfolio (where the union has only a small role)  hardly has the same cachet as, say, the competition supremo job which gives Neelie Kroes, the incumbent, the power to take on companies such as Microsoft.

But now this Commission has entered its final year and a half, and some of its members have already jumped ship. Markos Kyprianou, formerly health commissioner, has returned to Cyprus to become its foreign minister. Franco Frattini, justice commissioner, is on unpaid leave to participate in this month’s elections in his native Italy.

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In many ways, continental Europe is increasingly an area without borders (viz the euro single currency, cheaper cross-border mobile phone calls, the enlarged passport-free travel zone).

But not everything works seamlessly.

I thought about this because of a fascinating story (warning - this is quite a large PDF file, but it has great pics) in the Bulletin, an English-language magazine in Brussels, on the subject of joined towns on the Belgo-Dutch border.

The story on Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau highlights the quirks of residents’ lives as they constantly flit across two countries.

It details how the frontier runs through houses, shops and restaurants. People also have to grapple with varying tax systems, closing times and speed limits.

Apparently, women are able to choose the nationality of their child depending on the location of the room in which they give birth.

The story highlights this sad case: a body was discovered in a house on the border. Police from both sides had to cooperate to be certain that they didn’t encroach on the other’s territory, leading to evidence becoming invalid.

If you want to know more about the towns’ unusual situation, read this lively story, written in 2004 when the EU undertook its “big bang” enlargement.

Just setting up in sunny Amsterdam, where I’ll work for a couple of weeks. In Brussels last week, the talk was all about whether Belgium would split, creating an independent Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, and a French-speaking nation in southern Wallonia. Why? Because three months after the general election, the political parties have failed to agree on a new, national government, and even an intervention by the King has failed - so far. So amid all the doom and gloom, it’s worth nothing that there’s visible support for the supposedly unloved Belgian state.

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There is something vicariously thrilling about finding out how much your neighbour’s house cost or how high the rent is. So imagine the thrill of an (admittedly long) report from the European Union’s financial watchdog on how the 27-member club could spend its annual €345m on offices in Euroland for its 36,000 staff.

The EU, which includes the Commission, the Parliament, the Council, representing member state governments, as well as the Court of Justice and various committees, occupied 2m sq metres of offices in Brussels, Luxembourg City and Strasbourg in 2005. Other agencies and offices elsewhere were outside the remit of the Court of Auditors’ June 26 survey.

It found that the EU had similar problems to the rest of us with Belgian landlords, often being overcharged, saddled with maintenance costs and locked into long leases. However, it also said a lot of the tens of millions of euros of losses could be avoided.

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Expectations were not high yesterday at the Justus Lipsius building that Angela Merkel’s first press conference of this week’s tricky summit would bring much in the way of predicting the eventual outcome. If anything, these sunk further as the clock ticked and the event was delayed from 10.30pm to 11.00pm, finally kicking off at just short of midnight. Even then, however, Ms Merkel’s 15-minute performance, a charming-yet-brutal exercise in stonewalling, broke records in the utter absence of information it delivered about the state of the talks about reforming the EU’s institutions.

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There is an interesting exhibition currently on show at the Brussels Bozar cultural centre that got me thinking about a rarely-explored aspect of the European Union. Entitled "A vision for Brussels" the show tries to analyse why the EU has generally produced such dismal buildings for its institutions - and examines ways of improving the Union’s poor architectural record.

As any visitor to Brussels’ European quarter can testify, there is little that is beautiful or inspiring about the headquarters of the European Commission, the European Council or the European Parliament. The first two are housed in vast, anonymous blocks of stone and glass, while the Parliament is housed in a megalomaniac, post-modernist nightmare that arrogantly dwarfs the tranquil surroundings of the Place Luxembourg.

Perhaps even worse than the individual buildings, the EU has so far paid little or no respect to the urban environment in which it has dropped its shoe boxes.

The architects behind the Brussels exhibition - who hail from the respected Rotterdam-based Berlage Institut - have one radical suggestion to improve this sorry state: for starters, they call for the demolition of the European Parliament.

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Few would claim that lawmaking is a simple business. And it certainly does not get any easier when a piece of legislation will cover the actions and intentions of some 500m people and myriad companies and institutions in 27 countries.

A particular threat caused by the European Union’s unique set-up is that its laws have unintended consequences. An attempt to tackle market barriers in some member states may end up causing new restrictions somewhere else. What works well in one country can lead to mayhem in another.

This dilemma was once again in evidence earleir this week, when the European Parliament gave its final approval to an important change to the EU’s banking laws.

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The next summit of European Union leaders is still a month away, but Brussels diplomats are already busy drafting the conclusions of the March Council. Somewhat surprisingly, these over-long and bland documents end up being hotly-contested by ministers and heads of government during the actual meetings. Even more astonishing is the spectacle of spin-doctors earnestly briefing journalists about their government’s triumph in getting a certain word or phrase included in the final text.

In theory, Council conclusions should be significant. They represent, after all, what the 27 heads of government can agree on during one of their four annual get-togethers. But as David Harrison points out in a thoughtful article on the Council’s workings for the Centre for European Reform, the regime is ripe for reform.

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