I was listening to Sony Kapoor the other day who complained about bad summit outcomes during the euro crisis. Actually it was a chilling talk as he basically confirmed that nobody in EU governments or EU institutions seems to have a clue about finance and economics – let alone the political will to look at the underlying problems of the crisis. And curiously we are faced with the following situation: Seemingly incompetent people meet for diner and negotiate about highly complex matters throughout the night – with a press conferences at 4am or 6am… And it seems obvious to me that decisions that are taken at 2am are not necessarily the best decisions – so are we really surprised that the outcomes are sub-optimal?
Here is an idea:
Get rid of evening summits and endorse normal working days – start in the morning with a working breakfast followed by a morning session and a working lunch. Negotiations can continue in the afternoon. Forget about the diner – go to the pub instead for a normal night out. It might also do the trick to create a team spirit among EU leaders!
The issues at stake at the moment are far too important for negotiations after a busy working day – you really need the whole day! This would also improve coordination with national capitals as experts in ministries and parliamentary committees would be at the disposal during summits. And there would be no more press conferences at 4am – good news for all journalists and bloggers…
Interesting point, but it is not by accident that the meetings start at the end of the day. It is an intentional strategy: by fatiguing possible opponents, some results can be forced upon weaker negotiators. And of course, tired journalists will be less critical at 5AM…
That one made me smile. But I would tend to agree. It would also help I suppose if the different parties negotiating did not change their requirements and targets every hour or so. I suspect it makes it very difficult to get to an agreement.
This sounds like a nice proposal, but it assumes that negotiations only start with the dinner and are not ongoing long before. I may also raise the issue of markets, i.e. that negotiations after European (and often US-) markets have closed don’t make the negotiators face with minute-by-minutes updates from international stock exchanges. It’s not an argument I would necessarily find convincing, but maybe some leaders do.
during the day they would never reach agreement, and would fight till late night anyway. the only way such negotiations would work during the day is if you don’t feed them since morning, and then then the prize for agreement is a dinner…
whether EU leaders pull an all nighter shouldn t be too much of a concern for anybody. however, the fact that
“nobody in EU governments or EU institutions seems to have a clue about finance and economics – let alone the political will to look at the underlying problems of the crisis. And curiously we are faced with the following situation: Seemingly incompetent people meet for diner and negotiate about highly complex matters throughout the night”
seems to be the crux of the problem.