EGN NEWS DESK
Take the upcoming commissioner hearings. For months earlier than their supposedly high-octane public grillings within the European Parliament, commissioner wannabes have been courting EU lawmakers one-to-one, and even assembly complete factions to construct heat ties and head off awkward questions. When the hearings ultimately occur, all the pieces will have already got been stated.
Or final week’s EU leaders’ summit on migration, the place some ten highly effective politicians from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met for breakfast, predetermining the European Council’s end result earlier than it started.
Or have been the true choices, in truth, taken at daybreak — when the dominant center-right European People’s Party met to set its agenda? Or was it the ambassadors who met to agree a draft textual content? Or the ambassadors’ juniors?
Political scientists who’ve tried to hint again the place the important thing choices in Brussels are actually made invariably go mad, and may be seen pacing the Schuman roundabout, muttering about how an opportunity assembly of barons at a medieval inn in A.D. 432 predetermined the EU in 2024.
There’s a sample right here. For these looking for solutions about why the EU fails to seize voters’ consideration, look no additional than its compulsion to pre-seal politically contentious choices in closed-door conferences and merely current the ends in public when it’s all a fait accompli.
Such precooking implies that when a giant EU resolution is lastly plated up, the political meat has been flame-grilled into oblivion.
