Having dashed to Brussels on a Queen’s Flight jet, David Cameron found he had too little to do.
Rather than kick his heels in the British suite on Floor 70 of the Justus Lipsius building, the Prime Minister pulled out a Red Box and started quietly working through papers from home. He then made some phone calls to London and later slipped out unseen for a meal with close aides at the nearby 1898 Brasserie.
This should have been crunch time for the 27-player chess match called to decide a seven-year EU budget worth close to a trillion pounds. Diplomats are scathing about the leadership of Herman Van Rompuy, the full-time President of the European Council who was once branded a “low grade bank clerk”.
One said: “We spent a whole day here while he talked to leaders one by one until at midnight he came up with a set of numbers that were basically no different. There was no momentum, no attempts to pick off countries or create alliances.”
In fact, one leader did make progress. French president Francois Hollande secured an €8 billion increase in farming handouts, reversing a cut in the Common Agricultural Policy.
Mr Cameron’s gambit of calling for £6 billion of cuts to the Brussels administration budget, including slashing back salaries and pensions for EU officials, to the outrage of European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, found less traction. EU officials scorned his plea for cuts in infrastructure spending as “anti-growth”. However, the PM kept together an alliance of 10 states for cuts, with Sweden, the Netherlands and, to some extent, Germany.
A frugal dinner of cold meats and chablis was postponed until after 11pm while everyone waited hungrily for Van Rompuy’s new numbers. Barely 20 minutes into the meal, they went to bed with nothing settled.
And with Angela Merkel and Hollande now saying they doubt a deal is possible, the chances are slender.
