The World

From a diplomatic point of view, last night’s German victory in the Eurovision song contest could not have been better timed. How fitting therefore that the nineteen-year-old chanteuse who carried off the title, Lena Meyer-Landrut, is from an old German diplomatic family. Her grandfather used to be German ambassador to the USSR. And I am sure that she must be related to Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, who is one of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s closest diplomatic advisers.

I knew Nikolaus quite well in in Brussels. where he was first spokesman for the German government and then for Valery Giscard d’Estaing, when Giscard chaired the ill-fated constitutional convention. Nikolaus was a charming and cultivated guy – but he was not exactly what you would call a song-and-dance man. Rather tightly wound, I always thought - although he did once let me interview him in a telephone kiosk. (There was nowhere else to sit.) Anyway, dear blog-readers, if somebody can pin down the relationship between Nikolaus and Lena Meyer-Landrut, I would be most grateful. Certainly, Lena’s victory is a diplomatic coup of which Nikolaus would be proud. After the whole row about the EU’s financial rescue package for Greece, the Germans are coming for an ear-bashing. From Athens, to Brussels, to Paris, the Merkel government has been criticised for being slow to act, and too fearful of German public opinion. Many of these criticisms strike me as unfair – and also, rather unwise, given that they are often accompanied by a demand for the Germans to stand ready to write another large cheque.

But the deterioration in relations has left the Germans feeling distinctly unloved. You can sense the relief at Lena’s victory in the headlines in the German papers. Today’s Bild am Sonntag, shouted – “Europe Does Like Us.”

All in all, a triumph of public dipomacy – so, all the more appropriate (and intriuging) that it should be achieved by the scion of a diplomatic family.