Posts Tagged Fredrik Reinfeldt

Seeing Herman and other summitry

Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on December 11, 2009

“Soon you will see a lot of Herman,” said Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt on Thursday evening. But not quite yet.

Former Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy officially takes up his job as president of the European Council on 1 January. So he was there, but not really there, at the two-day summit featuring climate change arguments interspersed with a bit of Greece bashing.

He gave a little preview to EU leaders of how he wants to change things at the top, essentially: more meetings but with less blah blah. And then he said more or less the same thing, one assumes, on a short video statement tucked away in the broom cupboard part of the council’s website. And then he was gone. As fleeting as that.

A journalist at the press conference asked where he was – as if he had been spirited away against his will – “I will tell him that you are missing him. I think he will like that,” replied Reinfeldt, gloriously riding out his role as last proper rotating president. The kind with guaranteed visibility.

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Now we all know that Gordon Brown doesn’t do gushing. But still, it was quite something to hear the UK prime minister intoning that Nicolas Sarkozy was one of his “best friends” at their joint let’s-put-this-’evils of Anglo-Saxon capitalism’ discussion-behind-us press conference . He opened his mouth and the words traipsed out in a truly desultory fashion, landing in the roomful of journalists with a loud thud. How nobody howled with laughter is a small mystery.

He needs a small body language lesson from Sarkozy, who, during a bit of recipocral praising, simultaneously managed to cram in active facial expressions, expansive hand gestures and a bit of feet shuffling. Ten out 0f ten for effort.

Well perhaps the newly dusted off entente cordiale is due to them all sitting closer together at the table. Now those (pesky) foreign ministers have been banished, all the EU leaders can fit around one table and are able to hear and see each other without the aid of a video screen. They much prefer it, by all accounts, shedding not so much as a tear for their disgruntled  top diplomats. Aside from anything else, it’s all the better for physical (and not just metaphorical) arm-twisting, I suppose.

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On names. There is some confusion on pronunciation and content it seems. An EU diplomat remarked the other day that Catherine Ashton’s several titles and names are a source of differences (though this has not spilled over into policy yet). She is variously Baroness or Lady, Catherine or Cathy, Ashton. Her official title – High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy - does not exactly roll off the tongue either.

And Van Rompuy’s name is not just a source of pronunciation horror for newsrooms across Europe. Diplomats and colleagues have also been grappling with it. Said the same diplomat: “I’ve checked, it’s Van Romp-eye, like eye,” he said helpfully. So there you have it. If not from the horse’s mouth, then from someone who has heard it from someone close to the horse’s mouth.  Bound to be correct then.

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A change of humour at the top

Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on June 11, 2009

Come July it will bye bye chaotic Czechs and hello steady Swedes. I have to say I was a bit worried that the Swedes would be awfully diplomatic and maybe a little too serious to give us journalists the colour we crave during its six month presidency of the EU.

Would there be an equivalent of the I-don’t-like-the-Lisbon-treaty-anyway former Czech PM Mirek Topolanek? Who in the Swedish government would answer “What did you expect – Aliens?” to a question about why there were so many men (rather than women) at the podium of a press conference. Who would shout fire and brimstone down on Obama’s spending plans? Is there a piece of art being finished off that will cause a diplomatic incident with Bulgaria? Is the government likely to collapse half-way through in a frenzy of back-stabbing in part orchestrated by the country’s head of state – who also happens to be a climate change-denying eurosceptic?

Well that all seems quite unlikely. (Although much more of the above would have caused a collective bout of diplomatic hysteria in Brussels. So it was lucky Jan Fischer came along.)

But actually, what we do have is a witty Swedish PM. Fredrik Reinfeldt was in the Centre for European Policy Studies on Tuesday giving a room full of diplomats, business people and journalists a sneak preview of the Swedish style.

And there were some nice wee lines in there delivered in a wry manner.

Take this: He was listing the problems facing his presidency including climate change, economic problems, EU institutional problems when he said: “I recently read that we are about to face a water crisis too and I thought, why not – let’s add that one to the list as well.”

Or this: “The electorate is not in love with that message” on chat about EU institutional problems with ordinary Swedes.

He also delivered a neat rebuff to Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov, who often lurks in the audience at these types of events and appears (to my mind at least) to ask questions especially tailored to rattle the speaker of the moment.

And so it was this time. Chizhov asked Reinfeldt what he felt about the Russian-German Nordstream gasline project. Sweden has been objecting to it on environmental grounds, arguing that its planned passage through the Baltic Sea will dislodge unexploded war mines causing serious environmental damage.

So he turns to face Chizhov directly, tells him he is speaking as the Swedish PM and says it is a question of legality and not a political issue:

“We believe in the rule of law. If you apply to build a gas pipeline near our country… we will ask if it is in accordance with our environmental guidelines. That is what we are asking the Russian government to do with Swedish business interests that come to Russia, to treat them according to Russian law and nothing else.”

So there. He got a round of applause for that one.

And so there to us journalists too. Perhaps it will be colourful after all under the Swedes – but a little less garish shall we say…

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