Brussels briefing
With gruelling euro crisis months turning into torturous years, it’s little wonder that Euro czar Olli Rehn, right, likes to sweat away the pressure in one of his country’s national icons, the sauna.
The sauna has been the setting for some very important political meetings in the past such as warming relationships in the Cold War between German chancellors and Russian presidents.
Now the Finnish commissioner is using it to thaw some of the frosty views of the Anglo-American media towards the euro.
Six male journalists, four from the non-euro Britain and US, were invited to bare all — in traditional Finnish fashion — and share the sauna in the basement of the Berlaymont, home of the commission.
Sitting about in the nude encourages male bonding, apparently. The commissioner shared naked truths with them about the euro and its travails.
But a question later from a female journalist about why it was an all-male event left the usually ice-cool Mr Rehn blushing.
It is not often that Ireland espouses a view contrary to the US when it comes to business. But we have become known as the “hysterical Irish” for the Government’s reaction to a new law that insists oil, logging and mining companies must tell what they pay to governments for the rights.
Arguments that some of the wealthiest countries, mineral-wise, have the greatest poverty didn’t cut it with the Irish, who are generally the biggest donors to some of these places.
Unusually, Ireland was the country most against the legislation, which is similar to the Dodd-Frank law in the US designed to prevent the widespread corruption among companies, especially in the Third World.
And they are totally hysterical when it comes to including forestry. Mention of fracking for gas to minister Richard Bruton, below, — who conveyed Ireland’s reservations — almost sent him into orbit.
Why Ireland has taken up this position is a mystery.
Fianna Fáil may be finding it difficult to rally the troops at home, but it’s not the case in Brussels.
About 40 of the party faithful turned up to a gathering in the well-known Irish watering hole Kitty O’Shea’s, strategically situated behind the commission.
It was a fair turn-out, given nobody in a position of responsibility in the commission or council can display their political colours in public.
The Paddy Hillery Cumann was created — named after Ireland’s first European Commissioner and the man voted world’s sexiest head of state by the German Der Spiegel magazine when he became president.
But despite Mr Hillery being remembered in Brussels as a champion of women’s rights, the top brass in his cumann is exclusively male.
Chairperson is Ciaran Bolger, former political adviser to Eoin Ryan who now co-ordinates group visits to the Parliament for the Fianna Fáil MEPs; vice-chair is Eamon Farrell, Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher’s assistant; and the three Fianna Fáil MEPs and long-time supporter Frank Wall are all honorary presidents.
Silvio Berlusconi, right, and his old bunga-bunga pal Gaddafi may be gone, but their legacy is living on.
When Europe reacted with horror to Italian government ministers’ suggestions to shoot illegal immigrants as their boats landed, Silvio came up with a bright idea.
He got Muammar to agree to keep them on his side of the Mediterranean, or at least take them back if they survived the crossing. An estimated 40% die en route, to which fishermen picking body parts out of their nets can testify. This ignored the fact that Libya had not signed any UN treaty on refugees and did not even have a government office to deal with them. They either jailed them or marched them into the desert, where they were expected to die from heat and thirst.
Mr Berlusconi’s government hailed it as an important turning point in the fight against illegal immigration, having sent back more than 1,000, including pregnant women and children.
But the Italian Council for Refugees tracked down some of them and took their case to the European Court of Human Rights, which this week found against the Italian “solution” to refugees.
Former GAA president Sean Kelly was left red-faced when he pressed the wrong button in the Parliament, where he is a Fine Gael MEP.
The Kerry stalwart issued statements decrying the waste of €180m a year of European taxpayers’ money on sending the European Parliament on a monthly trip to Strasbourg.
He called for an open debate on the issue and proposed hiring an auditor to do the sums.
But when it came to the vote calling for a single seat, Mr Kelly pressed the “No” button, as did his party colleague, Jim Higgins, while Gay Mitchell abstained.
“It was a mistake and I asked that it be changed,” explained Mr Kelly later.
There was a majority for shutting down Strasbourg, but the Parliament has no power over the issue as it is part of the EU Treaty that the MEPs, their assistants and their boxes of paper are shipped off to Strasbourg 12 times a year.
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