Look happy, Romano
"Look happy," Göran Persson whispered too loudly to Romano Prodi as the two men sat down for their press conference. The European commission had spent the day in Stockholm talking presidency priorities with the Swedish prime minister and his cabinet colleagues. It was probably supposed to be a jokey private aside, but the microphones picked it up anyway. Joke or no joke, it suggested that the commission president is not relishing the six months in which those sceptical Swedes will be running the show. True, things couldn't get much worse than during the now unlamented French presidency, when Jacques Chirac seemed to go out of his way to snub the chief of the ex?cutif bruxellois. Yet Prodi was candid enough to repeat that he had been disappointed by the failure of the Nice summit to agree significant reforms, especially in the sensitive area of national vetoes, because of opposition from countries like Sweden and Britain. Asked if he still had ambitions to harmonise taxes, he replied: "After Nice I have no ambitions. I had ambitions but the answer was no. I am ambitious but I am also wise. I tried. I can try again." Plaintive or what?
Press perks exposed
There is unease amongst the cream of the Brussels press corps over an exceptionally well-organised trip to Sweden to look at priorities between now and the handover to Belgium on 1st July. Wall-to-wall briefings with everyone from "he who decides" Persson downwards were soured only by distinctly unfraternal questions in the Swedish media about why so many already well-fed euro-hacks were being wined and dined at Stockholm's finest restaurant-and even being taken to meet the king and queen. Charming pair, especially her, but constitutionally disbarred from uttering so much as a squeak about their realm's European destiny-or anything else for that matter. Other favourite encounters included trade minister Leif Pagrotsky, a star performer who robustly defended his own doubts about the euro and why he thinks Sweden has an opt-out even if ECB president Wim Duisenberg disagrees. It was all refreshingly Nordic and open. (Tough on the French though, with much Gallic gloom at the lack of the langue de Molière, even on the impeccably open Swedish presidency website. Thank Thor there was nothing scheduled with the Swedish International Development Agency or Sida, which unhappily is also the French acronym for Aids.)
Rapid uranium reaction force
Nato's unanticipated preoccupation with depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans has left military diplomats across Brussels so exhausted that they have barely had time to sort out the lingering problems in the European defence dossier-with a Franco-Turkish pincer movement still blocking progress on arrangements between the EU and the Atlantic alliance. And down in the bunkers there was irritation too when Generalissimo Prodi weighed in to declare that he would like to see the uranium weapons banned-perhaps because so far the alleged victims have mostly been Italians. But other difficulties loom: Europe's nascent rapid reaction force cannot go into action until the HQ chappies move out of their notoriously public and accessible billet to a security approved, positive-vetted new fortress up the road. Trouble is that the Belgian builders are taking their time, with completion already slipping from March to May.
Reweighting for Godot
Trouble down at the European Voice, the well-informed hack's indispensable guide to the EU and its most arcane works. Founding editor and former Daily Mail reporter Jacki Davis has been suddenly and inexplicably axed. Insiders insist that the weekly, owned by the Economist Group, remains in good shape in the hands of publisher Dennis Landsbert-Noon. But gloom in the Davis household could be relieved by the 2001 Brussels press revue, presented by Jacki Davis's partner Geoff Meade (who is the Press Association's European editor). Meade is always a tonic in the dark early winter days of a Scandinavian presidency. Last year his "Italian Job" show, in honour of incoming Godfather Prodi, was widely praised. This year, with the Nice horse trading still fresh in everyone's mind, the revue is called "Reweighting for Godot."
Nigel gets his K
Getting a K is par for the diplomatic course for our man in Brussels (see Stephen Wall, David Hannay, John Kerr), and the current incumbent Nigel Sheinwald is no exception despite having been en poste at UKREP for a mere three months before the glad tidings arrived in the New Year's honours list. Great things await the new KCMG, who learned a few tricks spinning for Robin Cook in the glory days of New Labour. But the early gong was well and truly earned in his last job as EU director at the Foreign Office, where he masterminded all those smart Blairite alliances-with Portugal, Spain, Belgium and of course Sweden-to adjust to a more polymorphous EU no longer dominated by the Franco-German alliance. Nigel is a forceful fellow and colleagues are already predicting that the next honour will be a GCMG, otherwise known as God Calls Me God. n
