FOURTH NIGHT

I HAVE attended a half dozen or so European Union press events over the past year, most of which have taken place in Brussels, and I am struck each time by the sums of money spent and the dribble of material actually presented. It is near impossible to sit through them without wavering between sanctimony, hilarity and despair. There may be a few among the veteran press core who – due to mind-numbing years of exposure to bureaucratic babble – approach these events with the same solemnity of the event organizers. But most reporters consider them shams, though they do so only in private. There are never headlines the next day that read, “EU spends quarter million on tea and cookies” or “Nothing said in two days of jargon.” Continue reading