Older readers may remember when in 2017 — back when the EU was entirely in black and white — then-European Parliament President Antonio Tajani wrote to Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to point out that the Parliament was taking its summer break, and that no work should be sent over before early September. Tajani’s note was dated July 13.
A note from our Irony Department: This column is off next week as I’m on vacation. Although, as Tuscany is out of my price range, I’ll be vacationing at the Schuman roundabout instead.
But if major events happening while you’re on a beach or halfway up an Alp is a bad look, the alternative — working all through the summer just in case something happens — isn’t much better.
In the hot summer of 2009, when Tajani — yes, him again — was merely the European transport commissioner, he drew the short straw of running the good ship Berlaymont while the other commissioners took a break. He then used the time to remind Europeans not to lose their luggage, describing the “phenomenon” of lost luggage as “very important” and “extremely worrying.” Tajani, of course, was a close ally of the late Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, who had an awful lot of baggage (maybe even 10,000 suitcases full a day).
The summer before Tajani’s plea to keep a closer eye on your suitcases, the EU had launched a bloc-wide labeling scheme for sunscreen. Günter Verheugen, the commissioner for industry at the time, called the scheme an example of “responsible business behavior.” And Verheugen had perhaps more of a need for sunscreen than most, as in 2006, photographs had emerged of him relaxing on a nudist beach in Lithuania wearing nothing but a baseball cap — oh, and he was with his chief of staff.
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