The fact that European Union leaders have not yet reached a consensus on who should become president of the 27-nation bloc, with time running out before a summit on who should  be given the post, has compounded my belief that they should scrap the idea all together.

During the horse-trading of the past few weeks I have found myself asking the question: why do we need an EU president, particularly since the bloc has at least one, if not two, capable presidents already.

Having covered the EU in some depth for the past six years and travelled with EU delegations to many events, notably with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, I have found the system seems to work well for the most part. 

The post of EU president was created to give Brussels more clout and respect in world affairs. The person was supposed to be instantly recognisable and charismatic to boost dwindling public confidence which hit rock bottom when French and Dutch voters rejected the EU’s draft constitution in 2005.

A ‘No’ vote in Ireland in 2008 on the Lisbon reform treaty that replaced the constitution also damaged the EU’s international standing. 

A U-turn by Irish voters in October showed there is less of a need for a superstar to lead Europe because, as an entity — driven by a strong euro currency — the EU has, I believe, emerged from the economic crisis in good shape from a public relations perspective.
Belgium’s little-known Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy has emerged as the latest frontrunner, or compromise candidate.  A straw poll of 10 people around the EU district in Brussels showed three knew he was Belgium’s leader, two said he was a Belgian politician, and five were
completely unaware of him. 

So, if at least half of this mix of EU officials, lobbyists and lawyers haven’t a clue who he is, what hope is there for the man or woman in Dublin, Warsaw or Prague ?

The previous favourite and long-time front-runner was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The fact that he is on first-name terms with the world’s leaders and glitterati were his selling points. 

I have seen U.S. President Barack Obama change direction when out strolling during a G8 meeting to speak to his “friend Jose”.  Barroso is on first-name terms with just about all the world’s leaders after five years as Commission president.

If the EU wants a bit of showbiz, while in New York at the U.N. General Assembly, the former Portuguese Prime Minister was invited backstage by singer Bono at a sell-out concert by the Irish rock band U2. 

After the concert, Barroso went to an after-show party with the cream of stage, screen, music and fashion hosted by Rupert Murdoch for charity. He was seen holding the full attention of the Eurosceptical media mogul.

Under the current system, each member state holds the EU presidency for six months in turn. Giving a president a 2-1/2 year role is intended to give unrivalled continuity and make the EU more effective.

After working with more than 10 presidencies, I have found that some countries have strong presidencies and others do not — the problem is more with the country at the helm than with the system. 

The current Swedish presidency has been widely praised as pro-active, efficient, conciliatory, transparent and inclusive of all member states, taking into account all countries’ views and not just those of Paris, Berlin and London.

If Stockholm and Barroso are seen to work smoothly together, do we need to further complicate matters and add yet another European president ?

Photos: Top (clockwise from left): Leading contenders for EU President - Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy, former British PM Tony Blair, Luxembourg PM Jean Claude Juncker, former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende

Middle: Former British PM Tony Blair in the fast lane

Bottom: U2 singer and leading global aid campaigner Bono with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels

Photo; Irish "Yes" campaigners celebrate in Dublin, 3 Oct 2009/Cathal McNaughton)

Europe has become increasingly selfish and materialistic in the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the heads of the Roman Catholic bishops' conferences across Europe said at the end of their three-day annual meeting at the weekend.  "The crisis sweeping Europe today is serious," they said in a statement after the session in Paris. They cited materialism, individualism and relativism as major challenges facing European society.

The bishops' sober assessment contrasted with the upbeat mood that the overwhelming "Yes" vote in Ireland's Lisbon Treaty referendum created.  It must be noted they drew up their statement before they'd heard the news from Dublin on Saturday. And their statement ended with a note of Christian hopefulness. Still, their diagnosis is so fundamental it's hard to imagine they would have changed much in the text.

Here's the way they put it:

"All that has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a great stepping stone in the European adventure... (but) twenty years later, we now see that the incredible European project, with a strong ethical basis, has greatly weakened... The hopes placed on building Europe have not so far been fulfilled. Here we take note of the influence of several factors:

• "The development of the European Union has gone hand in hand with a growth in consumption, at least for some people. The mere constant acquisition of goods will never fill people's hearts... The rules of the market and competition will never give birth to the ideal.
• "Present society wishes to give to the individual every possible opportunity to exercise individual choice and to seek personal fulfilment. In doing so it risks simply locking the individual into the defence of self-interest or acquired benefits... A society in which each individual, each group, each nation defends only their own vested interests cannot but be the jungle... We should not be surprised then if mafia and terrorist organizations thrive against this background...
• "A pluralistic society often risks being tempted by relativism, and particularly by ethical relativism. Each person sets their own norms and claims their own rights. Social life can only rest on common rules, on a vision of humanity that does not change according to shifting lobbies or opinion polls...

"The crisis sweeping Europe today is serious. Low birth rates and the future of its demography do not lead to optimism. However, we do not intend to be prophets of doom. Things are not necessarily doomed to get worse! Our faith calls us turn our attention to the European society in which we live, and to gaze on it with hope."

Do you think materialism, individualism and relativism are the main problems nagging Europe? If so, will it take more than the feel-good factor from the Irish vote to put "EU show... back on the road" again?

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The EU show is back on the road. Sixteen months after Irish voters brought the European Union's tortured process of institutional reform to a juddering halt by voting "No" to the Lisbon treaty, the same electorate has turned out in larger numbers to say "Yes" by a two-thirds majority.

This is an immense relief for the EU's leadership. After three lost referendums in France, the Netherlands and Ireland, and a record low turnout in this year's European Parliament elections, the democratic legitimacy of the European integration process was increasingly open to question. The Irish vote will not completely silence those doubts. Opponents are already accusing the EU of have bullied the Irish into voting again on the same text, and of blackmailing them with economic disaster if they did not vote the right way this time.

Try this for size from a British Euro-sceptic, Lorraine Mullally of the Open Europe think-tank:

This is a sad day for democracy in Europe.  The Lisbon Treaty transfers huge new powers to the EU and away from ordinary people and national parliaments.  EU elites will be popping the champagne and slapping each other on the back for managing to bully Ireland in to reversing its first verdict on this undemocratic Treaty. But most ordinary people around Europe will not welcome this news, as they were never given a chance to have their say on the Treaty.  We should all be deeply worried about the way in which EU leaders have gone about forcing this Treaty on us.  Polls show that the majority of people across Europe want to be consulted on major transfers of power such as this - but politicians in Brussels aren't interested in what the people want.

The fact that the turnout in Ireland was higher, and the majority larger than in the first referendum may blunt such arguments. But EU leaders will clearly learn one key lesson from the Irish precedent: the days of grand treaties on ever closer European union are over. With unanimous ratification by 27 member states required, the probability of at least one country rejecting change is just too high.

For better or worse, the Lisbon treaty will be Europe's rulebook for a generation. I reckon there won't be another major overhaul of EU institutions for 20 years. Any further integration will take the form either of closer cooperation among groups of like-minded countries on issues such as defence, justice or taxation, or perhaps of limited, specialised treaties on policy areas such as energy and climate change.

The Lisbon treaty, and its predecessor, the defunct EU constitution, were never the federalist blueprints that their opponents claimed. But Lisbon does offer he prospect of somewhat more efficient leadership and decision-making in an enlarged Union. More decisions will be taken by majority vote instead of unanimity, notably on justice and home affairs. The directly elected European Parliament will have power over more legislation. And national parliaments will have a better chance to scrutinise, and send back, EU legislation.

A new long-term president of the European Council of EU leaders and a foreign policy chief at the head of a 5,000-strong diplomatic service and an 8-billion-euro budget will give Europe a higher profile on the international stage. But whether the Europeans become bigger global players hinges largely on their political will to think and act strategically, and to risk involvement in trouble spots and crises. To judge from their disjointed efforts in Afghanistan, that is still a tall order.

Europe's effectiveness will also depend on the personalities chosen to fill the big jobs. These appointments are traditionally stitched up in backroom deals between EU leaders in compromises between large and small states, northern and southern (and now also eastern) Europe, and between left and right. Of course Europe needs political balance. But it also needs strong, inspiring leadership.

If the first president of the European Council is a figure of international stature, with charisma and a successful track record in government, he or she will give the EU a bigger place in the emerging new world order. Ditto for the foreign policy chief. It is depressing to hear some officials say their prime ministers want weak personalities who won't overshadow them.

The next few weeks until the EU's October 29-30 summit will be dominated by speculation about who will get which job. When you hear the names of Tony Blair, Jan-Peter Balkenende, Paavo Lipponen, Bernard Kouchner, Carl Bildt, Olli Rehn, Michel Barnier or Hubert Vedrine, ask yourself one question: who will do the best job for Europe, giving the EU the most credible profile around the world and with its own citizens.

Germans have voted for change. A centre-right government with a clear parliamentary majority will replace the ungainly grand coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats that ran Europe's biggest economy for the last four years.

This should mean an end to "steady as she goes" lowest common denominator policies, and at least some reform of the country's tax and welfare system. The liberal Free Democrats, who recorded their best ever result with around 14.7 percent, will try to pull the new government towards tax cuts, health care reform, a reduction in welfare spending and a loosening of job protection in small business.

Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, a cautious centrist, made clear in her first post-election comments that she she would not allow a radical lurch to the right. She promised to be the "chancellor of all Germans" -- old and young, entrepreneurs and workers -- and said the conseravtives would be sufficiently dominant in the new coalition to prevail "in questions that affect social balance".

The new government faces tough economic challenges in what is bound to be a more polarised political atmosphere, with the Social Democrats in opposition. The economy is expected to contract by at least 5 percent this year, and export-led growth is likely to return only slowly. Unemployment is set to explode in the coming months as short-time work schemes run out. The budget deficit is set to top 6 percent of gross domestic product next year, more than twice the EU limit. So 2010 will be an extremely difficult year. But there are some problems that are even more urgent.

The first big choice involves Germany's ailing banks. Outgoing Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck admitted last week that the public-owned regional Landesbanks "continue to pose an enormous systemic risk to our market". The outgoing parliament passed a virtually useless "bad bank" law meant to encourage stricken financial institutions to put their toxic assets into state-guaranteed special purpose vehicles. The banks have so far spurned the system because it leaves the risk of losses with them rather than with the taxpayer.

Merkel and her new partners need to amend the law so that the state takes more of the risk, otherwise Germany faces a future of "zombie" banks that are too burdened with liabilities to lend to the real economy. That won't be popular, with the left bound to claim that taxpayers are being forced to bail out wealthy bankers.

Fixing the banks is more urgent than cutting taxes or curbing public spending to revive the economy. That also means merging the Landesbanks, shrinking their activities and privatising as much as possible. The Germans must also be ready to allow healthy foreign banks to buy up sickly German ones. That is the logic of the European single market, to which a centre-right government is likely to be more committed.

That brings us to the next urgent priority. The new Berlin government should reconsider the dodgy deal it clinched on the eve of the election to rescue the ailing Opel auto manufacturer. Germany promised billions of euros in state aid for a consortium of car parts maker Magna and Russia's Sberbank to take over General Motors' European arm in order to preserve four production sites and as many jobs as possible in Germany.

The European Commission has made clear that "bribing" companies to skew restructuring plans according to national interests breaches EU rules. Merkel should seize the opportunity to seek a deal with other countries with Opel and Vauxhall production sites to co-fund a restructing plan along strictly commercial lines. In the longer term, Opel will need a bigger industrial partner to achieve critical mass in the inevitable consolidation of European auto sector.

Fixing the banks and Opel will be the first two tests of whether Germany gets the change it needs. Tax cuts and welfare reform will take longer and be trickier, especially given the burgeoning budget deficit and debt mountain.

The Czech Republic has got what amounted to a disappointing end-of-term report from the European Parliament.

In a debate this week on the six-month Czech presidency of the European Union, Prime Minister Jan Fischer said that although the first six months of 2009 would go down in EU history as a demanding period, Prague had got through “without major hiccups”.

Few people in the assembly seemed to agree. Deputies said there had been some successes, but overall were underwhelmed.

“The Czech presidency will not go down in history in the way that we had hoped,” said Alexander Lambsdorff, a German from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats.

“What we would have liked the Czech presidency to achieve in terms of challenges has unfortunately not happened,” said Rebecca Harms, a German member of the Greens. “Unfortunately your country was weak.”

Holding the presidency was never going to be easy for a relatively small and new member state with a eurosceptic president in Vaclav Klaus.

Matters were made worse by two crises in January - Russia’s gas price dispute with Ukraine and an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip - and the fall of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek’s government midway through the presidency.

Topolanek upset the European Parliament by saying U.S. efforts to end the economic crisis were a “path to hell” and Klaus prompted a walkout when he addressed the assembly.

There was also criticism of an artwork that was erected at EU headquarters but was later removed. The map of Europe by a Czech artist depicted Bulgaria as a toilet and Romania as a Dracula theme park. 

Even so, the parliament’s feedback was not all bad. Fischer won praise for his work after taking over the government and the presidency. Some deputies said Prague had done well in standing up to protectionist moves and hailed its work in securing agreement on an overhaul of financial regulations and on measures intended to encourage Irish voters to back the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty.   

“The Czech presidency proved a mid-sized country and so-called new member state can really do a very good job,” said Jan Zahradil, a Czech member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group.

But overall the assessment was damning. Expectations are much higher for the Swedish presidency for the rest of the year.

“The Czech presidency has followed a depressingly familiar pattern,” said Nigel Farage, leader of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party. “What we’ve got is an over-regulated model that is serving us very badly during the depths of a recession.”

He, however, singled out what he called one wonderful moment - when Klaus accused EU leaders of not listening to European citizens and told them some “home truths”, prompting some members of the assembly to walk out.

“At least for Vaclav Klaus, we thank you very much for the last six months,” Farage said.

 Pat Cox, Joseph Borrell, Hans-Gert Poettering and now Jerzy Buzek. What do they have in common ? For those outside the EU bubble in Brussels, Polish conservative Buzek was elected on Tuesday as the new president of the European Parliament, following in the footsteps of the others mentioned above.
    But does anyone really care ?
 I asked on Facebook if anyone could name the previous two presidents and from those of my friends who do not work in any of the European Union institutions, I received numerous responses ranging from Barack Obama to Seamus & Sheila McSpud.

 In his first media interview after taking over as the head of the EU’s directly elected assembly in 2007, Poettering told me he was going to make the European Parliament one of the best-known legislatures in the world.

 Poettering’s closeness to German Chancellor Angela Merkel was supposed to give him a greater voice and increase parliament’s influence over EU legislation, notably on climate change and financial regulation.

 But even with greater media coverage of the EU’s co-legislature, notably of the committees responsible for these important areas of competence, June’s election still resulted in a record-low turnout and further diluted public opinion of the parliament.

So, can former Polish Prime Minister Buzek — the first assembly president from a former Soviet bloc country — succeed where his predecessors failed and put the European Parliament on the international map ? I doubt it.

After his Social Democrats scored their worst-ever result in European elections on Sunday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier might have thought things couldn’t get much worse. But then the man who hopes to beat German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September’s federal election sat down for a late night television talk show. During the one-hour broadcast, a tense-looking Steinmeier tried to answer the growing number of critics who say he lacks the charisma for the top job — but to many, he only ended up confirming that view. 

Breaking from his normally polite, soft-spoken manner, Steinmeier frequently interrupted presenter Anne Will. When Will presented him with a video clip of SPD activists questioning his ability to energise the party, Steinmeier tried to sell his ”seriousness” as a vote-winning virtue. Perhaps the oddest moment came at the very end, when an unemployed man from eastern Germany complained about his struggles to find work. After quizzing the gas fitter about his search, Steinmeier announced that he had “two or three ideas” about jobs in the man’s region and promised to personally take charge of finding him a job.  To derisive chuckles, his spokesman was asked at a regular government news conference on Monday whether Germany’s other 3.5 million jobless could count on the SPD candidate to personally sort out their work woes. No, the spokesman said, shifting uneasily in his chair: “The situation yesterday was very special.” 

German media were ruthless in their verdict on the man one newspaper called “Mr Colourless”. ”The SPD candidate has rarely looked less confident,” Spiegel magazine said in its online version. Berlin daily Tagesspiegel said: “Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s suffering continues and we suffer with him.” Vice Chancellor in Merkel’s uneasy grand coalition government, Steinmeier has tried over the last few weeks to carve out a new image for himself as a staunch defender of German workers. He pushed aggressively for the government to rescue carmaker Opel, which it did, and backed similar treatment for retail group Arcandor until it became clear that wouldn’t fly. The European vote made clear his party is not winning points on the issue. The SPD scored a record-low 20.8 percent on Sunday, compared to 37.9 percent for Merkel’s conservative bloc.

By Caroline Linton

The gloves are off in the run-up to this week’s European Parliament election. 

The Party of European Socialists (PES) has published a list of 11 rival candidates it describes as terrible and invites readers to complete the list by adding a 12th candidate of his or her choice. The PES’ centre-right rivals, the European People’s Party (EPP), has hit back by calling it ”cheap populism”.

The list is headed by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and includes Jaime Mayor Oreja, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, and British National Party candidate Nick Griffin. Griffin, Igor Gräzin of the Estonia Reform Party and Derk-Jan Eppink of the Belgian Lijst Dedecker are the only three representing groups that are not part of the EPP.

PES officials said the candidates on the list would not contribute anything positive to parliament. In the case of Berlusconi, the PES’ complaint is that he has no intention of sitting in any of Italy’s five electoral regions. It said sed Oreja had not spoken in the parliament since November 2007 and had failed to condemn the authoritarian rule of General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1936 until 1975. 

It rejected statements by Eppink about what he called the the difficulty of being “a white, heterosexual Dutchman with a good job and an expensive car” in the Belgian region of Flanders. It criticised Brice Hortefeux, France’s social affairs and employment minister, for saying illegal immigrants were neither “honest” nor “clean”. Griffin has been condemned for denying the Holocaust.

EPP President Wilfried Martens issued a statement condemning the publication of the list and said it was a new low for the PES leadership.

“To call a number of distinguished EPP candidates ‘terrible’ as the PES did today or calling our millions of supporters across Europe ‘barbarians’ as the President of the Socialist International did last week, is truly regrettable,” Martens said. “I am convinced that the European citizens will punish the populism of the Socialists at the polls.”

The PES also suggested the EPP was such a broad alliance that voters who back a party in their home country could be backing a party in another country with policies and candidates he or she did not approve of.

Even so, the PES brings together various ideologies as well, with members ranging from the British Labour Party to the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy opens a jack-in-the-box  decorated with the EU flag, a boxing glove springs out and  knocks out the teeth of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan .

     “No more empty promises to Turkey,” a snickering Sarkozy  says.  The cartoon in daily Milliyet darkly panders to what most  Turks feel these days are the European Union’s true intentions  towards Turkey’s EU quest — no matter how many obstacles thrown  at its wheels Turkey surmounts on the long and winding road to  Brussels, it will ultimately be denied entry at the gates of the  promised land .

    A survey last weekend by Bahcesehir University in Istanbul  showed that 80 percent of Turks believe that even if Ankara  meets all political and economic requirements for EU accession,  the EU will still not accept it as a member.

    The study was published ahead of the June 4-7 European  Parliament vote, in which Turkey’s bid to join the EU has become  an election issue in some EU countries to the chagrin of the  Turks, always sensitive about their self-image in the West .

     Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Sarkozy of France  have used the campaign trail to reiterate their opposition to  Turkey’s full EU membership, saying Ankara instead should be  given a “privileged partnership”; Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl  Bildt and his British counterpart David Miliband joined voices  to stress the “strategic interest” of accepting Turkey into the  bloc .

     Election issues can be notoriously short-sighted, but at the  heart of the debate is the very idea of Europe and where it  should draw its borders as it strives to tackle new challenges  such as globalisation, climate change, nuclear proliferation,  energy dependency, the rise of China and other powers or  security .

     Is Turkey — a predominantly Muslim country of 72 million  people with a per capita income of only one-third that of the  27-nation bloc — too poor and too culturally different to fit  into the EU? Do “Little Europeans” from Paris to Berlin, aghast at the  prospect of a EU bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria really want a  fortress and “Christians-only” Europe? Can Europe afford losing Turkey?

     Enlargement-fatigue and a Lisbon Treaty in intensive care  have narrowed politicians’ sights, but the wider question over  the future of Europe will not go away.

     Ankara’s lack of progress in key areas such as clipping the  power of the military and expanding freedom of expression since  accession negotiations began in 2005 has consumed much of the  debate of late. But again, what are four years in a country  which has changed beyond recognition since the 1980s by throwing  open its markets to foreign investors, shattering long-held  taboos and democratically electing former Islamists as president  and prime minister without witnessing a military coup?

     Those who back Ankara’s full membership say Turkey has  enormous benefits for the bloc — it is a secular democracy with  a vibrant market economy, NATO’s second-largest army, a  strategically positioned energy hub between the West and the  East, and a rising regional power with bridges to the Muslim  world .

     Those against it shudder at its sheer size — by 2050  Turkey’s fast growing population will reach 100 million –, are  troubled by its authoritarian ways, awed by its Islamic identity  and horrified at its treatment of minorities and news of honour  killings that feed the view of the “barbarian Turk” .

     Turks insist that joining Europe is the culmination of  founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s drive to modernise the country and say Europe without a city like Istanbul will never fully be Europe.

     Brussels says banning Youtube, prosecuting Nobel laureate  writer Orhan Pamuk for “insulting the Turkish nation” and  meddlesome generals are incompatible with European values of  tolerance, freedom and rule of law .

     In any case, if Turkey is to join Europe — there are more  than 80,000 pages of European laws and regulations before that  happens — it would take decades rather than years. By then both  Europe and Turkey will be quite different from what they are  today. Sarkozy and Merkel will be long gone from the stage .

     History of course carries its weight. After all, Ottoman  Turks stormed twice as conquerors into Europe, hammering at the  very gates of Vienna, and European powers occupied large parts  of today’s Turkey after the collapse of the empire .

     The survey by Bahcesehir University also highlighted Turkey’s own ambivalence toward Europe — aspiring to be a part  of it but harbouring dark suspicions towards it as well .

     Three out of four Turks believe the EU is trying to dismember Turkey and 81 percent believe the bloc’s goal is to spread Christianity. However, 57 percent said they wanted full  EU membership for Turkey .

     But again, can Turkey afford to lose Europe?  

By Tamora Vidaillet and Darren Ennis

Reporters at a long-awaited summit between the European Union and China in Prague Castle learnt more about the art of stage managing set-piece events than about the state of the EU-China relationship.

The Czech Republic, which holds the EU presidency until the end of next month, pulled out all the stops to ensure security was tight for Wednesday’s fleeting visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and a handful of ministers, who were kept away from journalists by barriers.

Ushered into a stuffy holding room hours before the meeting, journalists were kept from stepping outside even for a smoke for fear of escaping into the sprawling compound of the castle.

Outside, other aspects of the summit were subjected to similar controls. About 60 peope protesting against alleged Chinese abuses of human rights were kept well away from the eyes of Wen, who swept into the castle in a motorcade of black limousines.

Instead of letting Wen arrive to a chorus of abuse, Chinese men in suits carefully orchestrated a more friendly crowd of local Chinese well-wishers who merrily waved Czech and Chinese flags as Wen and his entourage drove by.

Once Wen’s car was safely within the sealed confines of the castle, the men handed out McDonald’s hamburgers to thank the crowd, which held up two banners in Chinese declaring their love for the premier.

Back in the castle, journalists from as far afield as Japan, Brussels, London and Paris waited impatiently before finally getting permission to go to what had been hailed as a news conference.

What an anti-climax. Rumours that plans to have a question-and-answer session would be scuppered proved true. Czech President Vaclav Klaus started a series of scripted statements. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso signalled for Wen to go next, but Wen made it clear he wanted the final word after what he described as 20 hours of flying time to visit Prague for just a few hours.

After his long statement, there was no time left for questions — on issues such as human rights or currencies — leaving journalists wondering why they had bothered to travel all this way.

Aides acknowledged it was more of a ceremonial, set-piece event than a meeting of substance.