Among (understandably) triumphalist reports that Germany had to surrender to Italy twice yesterday - in the Euro 2012 semi-final and at the EU summit - the websites of several Italian dailies are this morning also offering a quite funny video showing what journalists - apparently not only from Italy - were really focusing on while European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy were holding their joint press conference in Brussels.
Please do let us know if you spot one single journalist NOT watching football...
Hee hee
ReplyDeleteSays it all really. Dump the bureaucrats and the heavy handed legislation and leave it to the natural integration of the people of Europe over time by common trade, sport, etc., and the European ideal will be realized.
ReplyDeleteThe bureaucrats, the laws, the 30,000 Directives and Regulations intended to govern
ReplyDeleteevery aspect of our lives, are what the Europoean ideal is all about. There is no other reality. The EU is using the euro crisis to gain ever more powers.
The euro was intended to be the chain to bind the prisoners in perpetuity.
With the euro falling apart, the bureaucrats are out of control.
This is summit no 20. So in the larger scale of things the outcome of a single summit hardly counts.
ReplyDeleteAnd we are likely to see at least the same number of them, before all this will be over.
Was this a massive one. No not really most decisions are rather soft and can lateron be reversed if desired. Also clearly not a non-issue.
Markets are possitive they expected very little and see this this as a pleasant surprise. However the trends that count are still as negative as before so will soon pick up again. Like we have seen before. First a positive market reaction obo overall good news buy, overall bad news sell. After everything has been properly analysed I personally expect back to the trend which is going South. More complicated matters involved so will take somewhat longer than usual so likely the middle of next week, but will also depend on other news.
Can we get a trend out of this. I doubt that the North/Merkel was simply unprepared and forgot to take the initiative and was not prepared for eventualities. So likely not.
Another aspect. Atmosphere. This simply looks to deteriorate. Moving to blackmail tactics hardly creates a basis for constructive next summits. Imho the most important point it is clearly moving from mutual coopereration to simply 2 parties.