Brussels briefing

Savita rally at Irish embassy in Belgium

A group of about 250 people turned up to protest outside the Irish Embassy in Belgium during the week over Ireland’s failure to legislate on abortion despite Irish and European Courts saying the Government must.

People of different nationalities held photographs of Savita who died from septicaemia in Galway after miscarrying her baby girl, having been denied an abortion.

The wind and rain blew out many of the candles, as the event was hijacked by would-be politicians who pursued their own agendas — not unlike the Dublin politicians who have failed to take their duty seriously up to now.

More appropriate would have been five minutes of silence or a song — perhaps a rendering of Pete Seeger’s When will they ever learn?

Mass on Facebook

A Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest says: “We don’t allow your kind in here”. And the boson says: “But without me, you can’t have mass”.

It’s an appropriate enough joke for what has been called the “God particle”. But if you don’t get it, the European Parliament and the professors who do all are doing a joint Facebook chat tomorrow at 9.45am.

You get the chance to ask British Higgs and Belgian-born Englert about their theory — and maybe even tell some jokes of your own. lhttp://epfacebook. eu/zB

Bono on board

The president of the European Parliament is frequently dealt with by EU national leaders as a mild irritant that will go away if ignored.

In his address to the 27 at the start of their discussions on the EU’s €1tn seven- year budget, however, Martin Schulz had a world figure on his side — U2’s Bono.

The singer had urged him to continue to battle for sufficient funding for third world development aid and told Schulz that British prime minister David Cameron was a supporter too.

European aid costs each EU citizen €1.87 a month and saves millions of lives.

When the leaders get together to really do the business on the budget in the new year, however, Schulz will have an even bigger stick to wave than Bono — the parliament can veto the budget if they don’t like it.

Last laugh....

Foreign affairs

Our Taoiseach was in full flow at an Adenauer Foundation lunch in Brussels attended by ambassadors and diplomats interested in what Ireland will do for their issues during the EU presidency.

The Montenegrin ambassador was first off, asking about prospects for his country’s membership of the EU. He probably did not appreciate the Taoiseach appearing to lump his Adriatic Balkan country in with the “eastern Europeans”.

Next up was a Russian diplomat asking about visas and free trade. Mr Kenny asked why Abramovich had fired his Chelsea manager. It was unclear if the diplomat was a Chelsea supporter.

Greek à la carte solution falls short

Eurozone finance ministers, fed up at not being able to agree on how to find the money needed to cut the amount of debt Greece will be holding in 2020, have come up with a new plan. It’s ‘à la carte’.

Since the German’s won’t do interest rate cuts to the extent suggested on the money they lent Athens, they and others can choose some other way of getting the figures down. But despite this à la carte solution, they still have not been able to cut the debt sufficiently.

When will they accept they will have to take a loss on the funds for Greece and call it ‘solidarity’.

Voting on voting

For a number of years EU citizens have, at least in theory, been able to vote and be a candidate in elections to the European Parliament, no matter in which county of the union they are living at the time.

Now MEPs have voted by an overwhelming majority — only 23 voted against — to make it even easier for people to do so. For a full four years arrangements were held up because they couldn’t agree on how to prevent people voting in more than one country.

MEPs fighting a lack of interest among the electorate during polling are hoping that they will pass the latest solution in good time for the 2014 elections.

Brewing up beer money for sport

Suggestions that sports sponsorship by alcohol firms might be banned have sent the drinks industry into over-drive.

The Brewers of Europe used their annual gala to highlight that their 3,500 breweries spend €1bn a year on sponsorships.

Emmanuel Macedo de Medeiros, CEO of the European Professional Football Leagues, warned against any attempts to limit beer sponsorship.

As far as the brewers were concerned “beer sponsorship is a lifeline for community events making beer a fundamental part of Europe’s social fabric”.

Cheers!

Tiger’s roar now more of a purr...

Just a few years ago Ireland fought like the tiger she was to convince the European Commission that the EU needed a Commissioner for Research and Development.

She scoffed at the opportunity to have charge of the EU’s biggest spending portfolio of agriculture and barely registered when the job went to Romania.

Now Ireland, no longer a tiger, more a slightly moth-eaten ginger cat, is standing firmly behind the French who influenced the Romanians in getting all possible from the new EU seven-year budget for agriculture.

Enda Kenny believes that fellow EU leaders now understood the potential agriculture and its spin-off food industry hold for growth and jobs in the future. And there was no mention of what was being shaved off Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn’s budget.