Battle for glory and a seat at the table dominate summit

EUROPE’s leaders may have set themselves the goal of solving the world’s economic and environmental problems last week, but everybody has their own problems.

Before the EU summit on Wednesday, word got out that there was a battle between the prime minister Donald Tusk and the president of Poland for the two places allotted to each member state around the EU table. President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, were the terrible twins that ruled Poland for the past few years. The new prime minister is an urbane, mild-mannered man who represents the modern face of Poland. But even he got caught up in the circus this time.

He refused to give a lift to the president in the state jet and said he would send it back for him. But anxious not to be left out, the furious president leased his own jet for the day and arrived in time to claim the second Polish seat at the table where both men ignored one another.

Meanwhile, across the road in the European Commission the British prime minister was undergoing a profound change. He had managed a starring role for himself at the Paris summit where despite not being a member of the eurozone, he turned up for the start of the meeting.

A colleague told the story of Gordon Brown turning up to one of the first eurozone finance meetings where he was unceremoniously shown the door after the start of the meeting. But aware of how that would look he hid in the toilets for a time before launching himself on the media and appraising them of his important role at the meeting.

It was obvious that Britain’s own Mr Spin was back in action and weaving his own spell over Mr Brown. Peter Mandelson knows exactly the EU buttons to push having pushed some right and lots of wrong ones during his four years as trade commissioner. He had Brown thanking Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso for his leadership in the present economic turmoil and thanking French president Nicolas Sarkozy for organising the Paris meeting — which equates to thanking him “for the use of the hall”.

Mr Sarkozy was so busy trying to manage the entire crisis that for once he was not everywhere.

Eventually, though, he did make it known that the “save Europe’s economy” plan had in fact been hatched between himself and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But with the stock markets continuing to tumble and the US refusing to cooperate, he might have been as well to leave the glory to Gordon.