Summer truce: European Parliament abolishes the mile!

Well, the European institutions are having summer holidays.

To fill the emptiness of these weeks of summer truce ('trêve'), the "Coulisses de Bruxelles", before moving to the United States, report about surprised accession candidates:

"The Croats, who are negotiating their accession, have been surprised that nothing will happen until September," a [member state's] Permanent Representative tells amused. "I have explained to them that this was part of the acquis communautaire and that they should better contain themselves from protesting against this pause; if not they would risk to be accused of not sharing the fundamental values."

(own translation)

Others across the Channel are looking for issues to fill the news gap of these long summer days, as MEP Richard Corbett can tell:

[A] Daily Express journalist has been in contact with me asking me whether there is anyone in the European Parliament campaigning to make the UK change its road signs to kilometres. [...]

So, sometime in the next month expect some ridiculous "save our mile" campaign in the Express suggesting there is a plot to force Britain to use the kilometre - even though the newspaper fully understands there is absolutely no threat whatsoever to the British mile.

Yes, everyone needs to have some replacement activities during summer.

Funny enough, a friend of mine asked me earlier tonight whether the election campaign in the US would take a summer break. I said: "No!" (which did not have as much influence as the Irish "No"). And I was right.

So, while Brussels is at the beach, at least the perishing superpower across the Atlantic will supply us with some funny political conflicts - and maybe the Coulisses de Bruxelles will bring some new insights that we can use for the European elections next summer.