Your next meeting doesn’t matter

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Meetings in Brussels are recorded in minutes but experienced in decades.

And here’s the worse news: For all the thousands of European Union meetings taking place here every week, chances are it was the previous one that actually mattered.

Take the upcoming commissioner hearings. For months before their supposedly high-octane public grillings in the European Parliament, commissioner wannabes have been courting EU lawmakers one-to-one, and even meeting whole factions to build warm ties and head off awkward questions. When the hearings eventually happen, everything will already have been said.

Or last week’s EU leaders’ summit on migration, where some ten powerful politicians from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met for breakfast, predetermining the European Council’s outcome before it began.

Or were the real decisions, in fact, taken at dawn — when the dominant center-right European People’s Party met to set its agenda? Or was it the ambassadors who met to agree a draft text? Or the ambassadors’ juniors?

Political scientists who have attempted to trace back where the key decisions in Brussels are really made invariably go mad, and can be seen pacing the Schuman roundabout, muttering about how a chance meeting of barons at a medieval inn in A.D. 432 predetermined the EU in 2024.

There’s a pattern here. For those searching for answers about why the EU fails to grab voters’ attention, look no further than its compulsion to pre-seal politically contentious decisions in closed-door meetings and merely present the results in public when it’s all a fait accompli.

Such precooking means that when a big EU decision is finally plated up, the political meat has been flame-grilled into oblivion.

The dangers of public meetings still exist, of course. If you’re a president of Europe turning up to meet the president of Turkey and find yourself relegated to the sofa, someone hasn’t done their homework.

Nonetheless, as the EU becomes ever more political, there are signs that the secretive meeting culture might need to change.

Some of the most dramatic moments in recent years have come from current or former commissioners like Thierry Breton and Nicolas Schmit venting in public about the way decisions were presented to them at their supposedly collegial weekly meetings led by von der Leyen.

A group of members of the European Parliament called the Young Europeans is pushing for debates to be held earlier in the lawmaking process to inject some real political jeopardy into the Hemicycle.

Let’s rendezvous back here next week. I’ll send you a calendar invite.

CAPTION COMPETITION

“Hands up if you hate the Royal Family.”

Can you do better? Email me at ewax@politico.eu or get in touch on X @EddyWax.

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Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.

“Don´t you know who painted the portrait of Louis XIV over there? I would like to hire him.” by Libor Kudláček.

Eddy Wax is POLITICO’s Playbook co-author.