The sausage factory – De Groene Amsterdammer
The home front – the editors – calls.
‘What has Brussels decided now? And why?’
There is still a three minute gap in the broadcast to explain it.
‘Can you manage that?’
The wakeful night before, heads of government have started an EU summit that has often been preceded by months of negotiations by top diplomats. Behind each decision hides a world that is called ‘the sausage factory’ in Brussels: nobody wants to know which slaughterhouses the ingredients come from and how they are pressed into the meat grinder, but at the end of the process there is a worst one.
Three minutes of live are just enough to shed light on the thickness, length and color of the worst, and why some countries wanted to put more pepper in them and more salt in another.
Who is in charge in that sausage factory? And why do we keep saying for sure that ‘Brussels certainly has’, in that factory politics, officials and diplomats from 27 countries are on the assembly line?
It still looks neat on paper. The European Commission does. Then it is the turn of the other two EU institutions: the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers from all countries. The debate starts in Parliament and changes are proposed. European ministers are also focusing on appearance. Depending on the file, the specialist ministers from all countries travel on average twice a month to Brussels from Luxembourg for consultations.
And in the best case, in case there is ready for the future: around and give for sending to parliament.
Then there is the ‘European Council’, the EU summit, for the heads of government to set out the broad outlines of foreign and security policy.
At first sight, for a novice EU correspondent, it is a fixed choreography. The dancers in the sausage factory do their steps within the space that the EU protocol gives them. They even hold ‘open days’ where ministers and heads of government offer a few quotes when they leave.
These are the dancers who are allowed to talk.
But the silent dancers keep themselves invisible. They are standing on stocking feet in the engine room of the sausage factory. It’s the diplomats. And their influence is growing.
What does a top diplomat in Brussels have? For the veteran I asked, the answer was simple: someone who operates as “the shadow incarnate.”
They have the best dog jobs in the bubble, they think. They watch from the wings as their chiefs, the heads of government, take historic decisions on the basis of their diplomatic preparatory work about Brexit, an explosive recovery fund of 750 billion euros. The price the ‘dogs’ pay: being on 24/7, zero family life.
They do their work anonymously and in the best case scenario, the Chef gets the credit. When journalists reconstruct how success came about the day after an EU summit, they feature in the newspaper as ‘Brussels diplomats who say that’.
They do have exotic designations. The highest diplomat of every EU embassy in Brussels is called the PV, the permanent representative, also known as the EU ambassador. The regular meeting on Wednesday and Friday of all 27 PVs together is called Coreper 2, an acronym of the French Committee of Permanent Representatives. There the politically important issues – migration, European budget, foreign policy – are discussed. Every PV has an Antici, his right-hand diplomat – the name refers to an Italian once devised this consultative body.
And then there is the Coreper 1 of the 27 deputy PVs who deal with issues such as agriculture, transport, social affairs and the environment. Their right-hand diplomats are called Mertens, named after the Belgian inventor of this right-hand body.
No European chief executive who takes a decision without first coordinating it with his PV, Antici and Mertens.
What does a working week of a diploma look like?
In the coffee bar where we had agreed we did not need one of the Antici’s to consult an agenda. The diplomat knew it by heart, it was a scheme cast in concrete.
Friday: The agenda of the Coreper 2 meetings for the week to come arrives by email.
Weekend: going through files.
Monday: The Antici’s consult with the home front in their capitals. The home front responds with final instructions for the PV. Result Monday afternoon in ‘Antici Note’.
Tuesday, 12:00 pm: Consultation in Brussels with all 27 Antici who are paving the way for their PVs to meet the next day.
Tuesday afternoon: the Antici’s effort on their PV.
Wednesday: starts Coreper 2; in the inner ring are the PVs, in the outside ring are the Antici.
“And the same goes for the days after, because on Friday there will be another Coreper 2.”
The dizzying discipline the Antici thought was ‘cool’. They are of course only small players in the whole, but they do sit nicely at one of the most important conference tables in Europe.
When he left after his six-year donation as PV, in the summer of 2017, Pieter de Gooijer had made an exception and for that one time he wanted to on the plate. He had represented the Netherlands in Brussels in a turbulent time.
Somewhat closed, not a word too much – that was the impression De Gooijer had made when he entered. Understandable: the euro crisis was still raging, the migration crisis was on the way, the British voted in a referendum for Brexit and the anti-European populists made a complete advance. In between, the Ukrainian civil war started on the EU’s eastern flank and Western and Eastern Europe clashed over crucial issues such as labor migration, the rule of law and freedom of expression.
The EU was going through a trough and that had completely changed De Gooijer’s work as a PV.
‘In the past, when there was a disagreement in Brussels, the heads of government could say: ‘Oh, you know what, we’ll talk further in a few months.’ That won’t work anymore. We are now negotiating at the cutting edge.’
More and more often, outside the regular Coreper 2 meetings, De Gooijer had one-on-ones with fellow PVs.
‘Sometimes in the cafe around the corner, for a more open conversation. You taste the space together. “How are you in here now?” Then the German or French colleague says, for example: “I have a very hard instruction from my government, and it will not budge.” You have to get to work there, otherwise he won’t do that anymore.’
As the crises piled up, the importance of this concealment among Brussels diplomats only increased. Complex Brexit negotiations, the trade war with Donald Trump, the dominance of China, these are just a few of the files that grew into chefsache, jargon for issues in which European heads of government have the last word. And they belong less to their specialist ministers, and more to their PVs who know how Europe is running. Proponents of greater transparency abhor the idea, wanting Coreper consultations to happen behind closed doors. But the trend has been provided by the coronavirus pandemic as the latest evidence.
While working from home and online meetings became standard throughout the bubble – at the Commission and Parliament – the PVs continued to come together as physically. The importance of looking each other in the eye within Coreper was too great. Their meeting room on the fifth floor of the Council building, nicknamed Het Ei, was redecorated. The PVs applied appropriate corona-proof distance, “but they could smell and see each other,” says a diplomat. ‘Brussels diplomacy is not about fine-tuning compromise texts. That’s just the end station. It’s about water before that happens: learning from each other, understanding each other’s differences and closing the gaps.’
For that reason, the PVs and their Antici, with 54 in total, go on an annual outing. One time to the Danube Delta on the Black Sea, the other time to a quiet place in Portugal. The thoughts behind it: things can be negotiated if you have spent a night together in a private circle. There is also gossip on those outings. Because there is another reason why European files are faster Chefsache turn into. And that reason is banal and has everything to do with the vanity of European Council President Charles Michel, the man who prepares the EU summits. Officially there are four: the autumn, winter, spring and summer top. More than enough, according to some government leaders, who would prefer Michel to set the table neatly: enough bottles of water and coke, some more napkins, ready. Then the leaders will rest. But Michel likes to come into the picture and organizes a summit every once in a while.
Brussels is almost at almost one summit per month, to the chagrin of many diplomats. There is no time for proper preparation and therefore the certainty of a good result.
In the Brussels Antici’s outline their position during an average EU summit, over the coffee that I will not laugh.
Promised.
Imagine a large building complex on the Schumanplein in Brussels. Google Street View shows how the European Council building on that square consists of a modern wing, Het Ei, and the old Justus Lipsius wing.
In The Egg of the European heads of government, without secondaries and often without mobile phones.
In the Ei, the PVs and the assistants of the leaders who traveled to Brussels from all countries are seated in their country delegation rooms around the room with the leaders.
During the summit, no one has contact with the room of leaders in those rooms.
Who knows all this time what happens during the summit?
‘That’s us, the Antici! And we pass that information on to our PVs.’
With a twinkle in his eye, an Antici draws a circle on a sheet of paper: the round table in the Lipsius wing aims to seat the 27 Antici at the start of each EU summit. And then the ritual begins that only has a right to exist in the tough sausage factory.
Every five minutes an employee of Charles Michel’s Council Secretariat appears in the room with Antici’s.
‘He then quickly rattles off what has just been said in the room with government leaders. I keep thinking: if only I had taken a shorthand course.’
The messenger disappears after five minutes and is immediately relieved by the next one, and that permanent changing of the guard continues until the end of the summit.
That doesn’t often last until four o’clock the next morning! Is there anyone else who will bring the Antici something to eat in between?
In the best case scenario, an Antici has an attentive PV who even makes the crossing halfway to the top with a bowl of hot food to the room with Antici’s.
“Then you’re good to go.”
But most Antici’s have to make do with home made sandwiches, a tangerine and a banana.
This article is a pre-publication from the story collection to be published by Prometheus at the end of November The Brussels swamp – Behind the scenes of power in Europe by Tijn Sadée and co-author Bert van Slooten. Until last summer, Sadée worked for more than twelve years in Brussels as an EU correspondent for the NOS and NRC Handelsblad. He is now working on reports and podcasts in the Balkans, including for the VPRO and The green