“The Sound of Europe”
Under that awful title, a bunch of worthies from politics and culture gathered in Salzburg last week as part of the Austrian attempt to re-define a European identity, or something like that. The best performance came no doubt from French PM de Villepin, who according to the FT flew in with a dozen French journalists, gave a speech that was almost incomprehensible due to all the name-dropping and way too long to boot, then left the proceedings to attend some cultural thing and flew back to Paris a bit later, without participating in any of the proceedings.
There were good moments of genuine debate, but the whole event just demonstrated how utterly out of touch Europe’s leaders — most of them, anyway, an exception being the Commission’s Barroso — are with the real problems afflicting the continent.
For a more rounded take on things, check out what I wrote on TechCentralStation.
Technorati tag: EU
