The Brief – EU summits and the Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by a nonprofit based in San Francisco. Created in 1996, it allows the user to go “back in time” to see how websites looked in the past.

I sometimes play with the Wayback Machine to refresh my memory. I remember most of the EU summits held since 1993 when Bulgaria started preparing its membership application, which it presented officially two years later.

Some summits to remember, some summits to forget. It was easier to remember summits in the old days because they were held in the capitals or major cities of the country holding the rotating presidency. Now, they are all in the boring Brussels building known as the Justus Lipsius.

Also, summits were akin to celebrations, as the countries were proud to highlight their culture and cuisine.

Lots of free food and drinks were available for journalists, who were also given souvenirs: Ladies used to get scarves and men’s neckties with the symbols of the presidency – today, possibly with a collector’s value.

I fondly remember the December 1999 summit in Helsinki, when EU leaders decided to open accession negotiations with Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Romania. Despite the cold, the atmosphere was celebratory, and the EU looked strong and determined to achieve its goals.

Another summit I have warm memories of was the one in Thessaloniki in June 2003, which was held back-to-back with a Western Balkans summit that confirmed the “EU perspective” for the EU hopefuls from this region.

As this summit took place just across the border with Bulgaria (and my home town, Blagoevgrad), I organised transport for a group of Bulgarian journalists who didn’t usually attend international events (travel was expensive at that time), and we all enjoyed the experience immensely.

I also remember the 2002 summit in Seville, which decided to “reorganise the Council formations to achieve greater efficiency.” One of the decisions was precisely that all regular summits should be held in Brussels.

Later, it was decided (at a bureaucratic level) that free food would no longer be available for the press, and the presidencies stopped giving journalists scarves and neckties.

This was also the start of a series of unforgettable summits for all the wrong reason: They were painful, as they were dedicated to the successive crises the EU had to deal with, starting with the eurozone crisis.

There was a time when no one knew in advance how many days and nights a summit might last, so journalists would ask leaders how many shirts they took in their luggage to second-guess how many days/nights they could be there.

Like the Helsinki and Thessaloniki summits, the upcoming Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday (14 and 15 December) is primarily dedicated to EU enlargement.

The most important decisions leaders may make is the opening of accession talks with Ukraine, indeed a decision of momentous geopolitical proportion.

But the atmosphere is far from celebratory, and the expectations are akin to those of the worst eurozone crisis summits.

The immediate reasons are that Viktor Orbán opposes the idea of EU membership for Ukraine and that there is additional uncertainty about the political will to fill a €98.8 billion gap in the seven-year EU budget, including €66 billion in fresh money.

But the real explanation behind the gloomy mood, in my view, is that the EU has accumulated too many internal tensions.

The first that comes to my mind is the blocking of Bulgaria and Romania’s accession to the passport-free Schengen area, without a valid reason, by the Netherlands and Austria. There are also other examples to illustrate the backlog of controversies the EU institutions cannot solve.

EU institutions are not impotent by definition: it’s the leaders of the EU institutions and their cabinets who lack political courage, and this is why they barricade themselves in a bureaucratic cocoon. This is the weak link that Orbán and Putin have precisely identified.

The job of the president of the European Council is to prepare the meeting so that it goes smoothly. Charles Michel has met with Orbán, and so has France’s Emmanuel Macron, but this effort only resulted in a mocking tweet.

A failed summit on 14-15 December would probably require another Council meeting before the end of the year.

In any case, these are likely to be summits to be remembered.

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The Roundup

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As fighting continues in Gaza, EU foreign ministers are on Monday expected to discuss possible next steps in response to the Israel-Hamas war, including a crackdown on Hamas’ finances and travel bans for Israeli settlers responsible for violence in the West Bank.

EU heavyweights are set for a showdown with Hungary this week over giving Ukraine billions of euros in aid and the chance to start membership negotiations, both key objectives for Kyiv as its war with Russia stalls.

News from Austria suggesting that Vienna is considering easing Romania and Bulgaria into the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone by giving the go-ahead to abolish airport passport checks was welcomed in Bucharest but firmly criticised in Sofia.

US President Joe Biden has invited Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a meeting at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing war against Russia and the “vital importance” of continued US support of their defense efforts.

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