Posts Tagged Nicolas Sarkozy

“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.