Take the upcoming commissioner hearings. For months before their supposedly high-octane public grillings in the European Parliament, commissioner wannabes have been courting EU lawmakers one-to-one, and even meeting whole factions to build warm ties and head off awkward questions. When the hearings eventually happen, everything will already have been said.
Or last week’s EU leaders’ summit on migration, where some ten powerful politicians from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met for breakfast, predetermining the European Council’s outcome before it began.
Or were the real decisions, in fact, taken at dawn — when the dominant center-right European People’s Party met to set its agenda? Or was it the ambassadors who met to agree a draft text? Or the ambassadors’ juniors?
Political scientists who have attempted to trace back where the key decisions in Brussels are really made invariably go mad, and can be seen pacing the Schuman roundabout, muttering about how a chance meeting of barons at a medieval inn in A.D. 432 predetermined the EU in 2024.
There’s a pattern here. For those searching for answers about why the EU fails to grab voters’ attention, look no further than its compulsion to pre-seal politically contentious decisions in closed-door meetings and merely present the results in public when it’s all a fait accompli.
Such precooking means that when a big EU decision is finally plated up, the political meat has been flame-grilled into oblivion.
