KIM DARROCH, SERVING HER MAJESTY ONE ROBOTIC PHOTO AT A TIME: Poor Kim Darroch, the fun-loving, charming former U.K. permanent representative to the EU who got his chance to meet President Barack Obama this week as the new British ambassador to the United States. And then he struck this rabbit-in-the-headlights pose.
SPAM-A-LOT: We thought blasts to the entire European Parliament about lost earrings seemed excessive, but a recent missive to more than 50 mailing lists — or about 10,000 people, including director-generals, assistants and trade unions — is a new extreme. Even worse, the missing item wasn’t a valuable piece of jewelry — it was a pen! But just not any pen, a purple pen with a silver cross on it. To boot, the sender works in the directorate-general for human resources. Pro tip: Signing your message with “p.s. sorry for the spam” doesn’t make the request any less obnoxious.
BY THE NUMBERS (BUDGETARY DISCHARGE 2014 Edition): No need to pore over all 162 pages of the 2014 Budgetary Discharge documents on a Friday night, here are few gems we pulled out for you.
€1.5 million: How much Parliament has paid Facebook and Twitter for advertising. Aren’t they supposed to be regulating these companies on data protection?
€120,000: The cost of updating the Parliament’s logo
€12,800: The cost for each of the 31 MEPs and staff members to swan around to European film festivals in Cannes, Venice and Berlin to promote the LUX Prize. What was that again?
€5 million: How much the Parliament spent to broadcast the European Parliament election results live from the Brussels plenary chamber
75: The number of staffers the European finance department claims it would need to oversee how MEPs are spending their general expenditure allowance, so for now there’s no oversight. Too costly!
I’M AN OFFICIAL, GET ME OUT OF HERE! The European Parliament’s employee unions are up in arms about the latest injustice from management: the thought of making EU officials work in cubicles. SHOCK! HORROR! Eurocrats are not poultry, they cry! An e-mail from the trade union SAFE with the subject line “Help! They want us to work in cubicles” seemed pretty desperate for a reality most workers accept. It compared the conditions to chicken pens. “There may be an EU directive protecting chickens and other poultry and improve their welfare, but EU officials and agents will be confined in small spaces when moving to a new building by 2018-2019,” the email says. “We will have to work in ‘cubicles’ — a kind of mini-compartmentalised work spaces, chicken pens actually — as offices.” The union even compared the work environments to “a choice between plague and cholera.” Welcome to the Third World, Eurocrats. Playbook will get you through it. We work in an open environment and quite like it that way.
THE TRAIN THAT NEVER CAME: MEPs were promised a direct train link from the European quarter to Brussels airport by December 2015, but the project has been delayed and they’re still waiting. Not even the legislative might of the European Parliament can move the project along any quicker. In the meantime, we’re all still dealing with the Schuman metro station obstacle course. The mezzanine level of the station now appears to be complete — no more temporary lighting, cables to trip over or dodgy surfaces. Instead, there is now a brightly-lit, cavernous, empty space the size of a school gym. It’s still a daily mystery as to which of the escalators will be working/not working. Now … which small member state can get finishing the station into the U.K. renegotiation deal? It might be our only hope.
WEIRDEST TWEET OF THE WEEK: The Parliament is saying what exactly? The best answer wins lunch with us.
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: The center-right European People’s Party group has lost another MEP to the European Conservatives and Reformists. Cypriot Eleni Theocharous is the fourth MEP to leave the largest political group in the Parliament since the 2014 election, rounding up the ECR’s total membership to 10 percent of the assembly. That would would give the group extra rights if the Socialists & Democrats and EPP are successful in requiring a higher threshold for certain Parliamentary activities.
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS … BUT NOT IN MY BACKYARD: Donald Trump is a special person, and his rallies are special places. So special that the U.S. Constitution’s second amendment doesn’t apply. No guns are allowed, though defending Americans’ right to bear arms is a key part of the Trump stump speech.
IN MALTA, YOU MAY KIDNAP THE BRIDE: Never mind the controversy over Poland’s recent laws and whether they comply with EU democratic norms. One reader tips us off to a law on the books in Malta, and it’s hard to see how it is compatible with the EU’s fundamental rights. As explained in the Daily Beast: “In Malta, if a kidnapper ‘after abducting a person, shall marry such person, he shall not be liable to prosecution,’ the law says. If the marriage occurs after a trial and conviction, the abductor’s sentence will immediately be wiped.”
WHO’S UP?
Pedro Sánchez
The second-place finisher in the Spanish election has been asked by the king to try to form a government.
Věra Jourová
Quietly put on notice by President Jean-Claude Juncker for underperforming in 2015, she turned around a negative court ruling on EU-U.S safe harbor data protection and negotiated a new agreement with Washington.
WHO’S DOWN?
Donald Trump
His whole image is based on being a winner, and in Iowa he lost.
Google
The tech giant is under attack from all quarters for its tax practices in the EU.