How to cancel an unannounced event
Angela suddenly got the feeling she didn't receive the email | AFP PHOTO / JOHN MACDOUGALL
The EU is known for organising meetings upon meetings, producing papers upon papers; green papers, white papers, draft treaties, real treaties, treaties to be agreed to by referenda, and what not. And the European institutions try to draw as much attention as possible to all these beautiful initiatives. And to do so they issue press releases, organise background briefings, press conferences, send out pamphlets and do whatever else is necessary so all concerned are in the knowing of the event that is about to take place.
For most regular meetings this machine runs smoothly. But, of course, as European integration is first and foremost a political project, things may happen to intervene with the calendar - the infamous “events, my dear boy, events” of UK PM Harold MacMillan, that is so often quoted by European President Herman van Rompuy. Already in normal times this may cause some disruption of the daily routine of EU-watchers and EU-workers. But ever since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there has not been something that can be qualified as ‘normal times’. And when subsequently the eurozone managed to run into a crisis of its own, the mere thought of normal times does not enter into the minds of these watchers and workers at all any more.
Virtually every week, and certainly every month, crisis meetings seem to have been held; but when politicians and civil servants started to realise that their actions had an impact on the ‘markets’ they became all of a sudden very inventive in organising meetings when markets were not looking or simply closed. In the beginning this seemed a not too difficult task: you start your meeting when the London Stock Exchange closed and make sure you have done your business before the Frankfurt Bourse opens. Unfortunately, it became pretty soon clear that the so-called global 24/7 economy is exactly that: operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There was no hiding any more. Of course, people did not give in so easily, and various meetings were organised over weekends. And not necessarily meetings, but also tele-conferences, conference calls and other wonders of present-day communication techniques.
By the end of last year things looked more calm as thanks to a massive ECB infusion of money in European banks and probably also because of crisis-fatigue (and rating-fatigue), markets started to follow their own logic. They started to take less and less notice of missed deadlines, promises not kept and the continuous stream of economic doom and gloom stories fed by statistics that turned more and more into the damned lies as they were once defined. This relative calm in which the markets find themselves since the start of this year seems to be pretty solid as continued political stumbling does not seem to cause the tiniest ripple in the pond.
Over the past months we have had meetings, emergency meetings, that were announced, created havoc in the anticipation of them and then either ended inconclusive or they were cancelled. But now a new phenomenon is appearing on the horizon. A phenomenon that is only possible in the motherland of surrealism, Belgium.
March1-2 saw the regular Spring European Council, normally dedicated to economic affairs - as nowadays all summits are anyway. But the organisers have come up with a novelty: they have cancelled a meeting of eurozone leaders after the regular summit. A meeting, however, that was never announced in the first place! This opens the route to evermore daring scenarios of creating hope, dashing it and then build up trust again, by cancelling meetings that never were. The only thing in real life - and outside Belgium - that can rival with this is perhaps France's brilliant idea of getting 80.000 people in a rugby stadium, only to cancel the France-Ireland rugby match a couple of minutes before kick-off. Come on EU, perhaps you can do better. The eurozone summit cancelling is a good start, now try to build on that!
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