Brown snubs Brussels

02 October 2007

Ninety-five days and counting. No, not the time taken to form a new Belgian government (that's 112 days), but the period Gordon Brown has been in office without paying a courtesy visit to Brussels, writes Stephen Gardner. It's getting embarrassing. Nicolas Sarkozy dropped into the European Commission one week after becoming president of France. Angela Merkel waited just one day after her appointment as German chancellor. In fact, Eurocorrespondent.com can reveal, a date in October has been agreed for a meeting between Brown and Commission president José Manuel Barroso. But the two camps cannot agree on whether it should be in Brussels or London. In the meantime, a competition is under way to see who blinks first. Barroso chose the Liberal Democrat conference, of all venues, to deliver a message that Britain should not retreat to the European sidelines. Brown then said he would not show up at a meeting of EU and African heads of state if Bob Mugabe is on the guest list. Brown is known in Brussels as truculent and only interested in Europe insofar as it suits Britain. But the current situation shows Gordon's over-riding focus is Gordon not looking bad ahead of an election campaign. Any European controversy should be avoided – in particular tricky issues such as negotiations over the Reform Treaty (as the EU constitution is now dubbed). It is a moot point if this approach benefits Britain. At a recent briefing in Brussels, Sir Stephen Wall, Blair's former EU advisor, said Brown's approach to Europe would be “Thatcherite”. But, as one senior former diplomat said, Thatcher “was a forceful personality. But she rarely got her way. In the end, the casualty was her.” A version of this article originally appeared in Private Eye.

 

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