Good morning,
It's been a few years since I last personally attended an EU summit, in the (slightly weird) Justus Lipsius building in Brussels - but the formula never changes.
Just like they say about war, it's "90 percent boredom, 10 percent fear".
The boredom comes from hanging around for hours, and hours....and HOURS (often these things are an all-dayer, followed by an all-nighter, followed, horror of horrors, by another all-dayer) for something to happen.
Something is happening, of course. In the same building, but in another room entirely (to which you will normally never have access), 27 heads of government are having discussions and making decisions.
The fear is the good old-fashioned FOMA - fear of missing out. Raising your eyes from your laptop, where you've just finished crafting the final 300 words of your story (the not-going-to-go-out-of-date-whatever-happens background and context, think of it as sort of "filler") to realise a huddle has just broken up.
A "huddle" is a sort of rugby scrum, whereby an official spokesman for one of the delegations just emerged, seemingly out of nowhere and with no warning, to give the juicy latest on what's going on.
Who was it? What did they say? What did I miss?
Nine times out of ten it was merely the spokesman for Malta (no offence to Malta), simply confirming that what was on the official itinerary was what they were indeed talking about.
But sometimes it wasn't.
That's when you need to rely on your friends from among the 600-800 other European journalists, all crouched over temporary trestle tables in the vast auditorium like some sort of village fete meets weird school overnight trip, to tell you what you missed.
- Matt Tempest, comment editor
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