Velvet Poetry from our Iron President

‘Haiku Herman’ van Rompuy, our Europresident, did it again! The man is amazing! Even in that shady collective of Eurogues and Beurocrats who often are as shameless as they are overpaid and fault prone, he stands out as a veritable champion, a Lancelot, a Cid...

The other day, in an interview with a German newspaper, Mr van Rompuy proposed that Europe be granted a greater influence over the pension plans of the EU member states. The commission, he said, ought to be able – listen closely now, dear reader! – ‘to make economic recommendations of an obligatory nature’!

Recommendations of an Obligatory Nature! Aaah, what a phrase! A boozing novelist on peyote couldn’t make it up! Now of course I know you are a poet, Mr van Rompuy. Your haikus are legendary throughout the Union. So I grant you that coining new phrases is your privilege. But I, sir, am a poet too (you may wish to take a look at volume xvii of my ‘Collected Works of Alfred B. Mittington’, particularly pp. 343-357 for my 1958 cycle of haikus on the Sputnik launch). So, from one fine poet to another, I ask you: would you not agree that the best word to employ is usually the shortest one that does the job? And there is already a brief and crystal-clear word for ‘recommendations of an obligatory nature,’ sir.

To wit: Diktat! And I suggest you use that in the future, instead of this wordy, lame-brained euphemism which will hide your true intentions from no one.

But was this merely a slip of Mr van Rompuy’s double-pronged tongue? No, not all the way, by the looks of it. Rather, it is policy, a new verbal approach of our European Commissars, preparing the citizens for what comes next. For what did Mr Joaquin Almunia (the Spanish Eurocommisar for Competition, and yet another example of a national politician who moved to a splendid career in Brussels after losing every election he ever tried to win) tell his own countrymen yesterday in the context of their Bank bail out? He said, and watch the wording, now: ‘las recomendaciones de Bruselas son obligaciones para España’, i.e. ‘the recommendations of Brussels are Obligations for Spain’. What a most remarkable coincidence of terms! Did we not know better, we might think that some coordination had taken place between Supherman and his buddy Don Joaquin…

Brace yourselves, you Europeans! For the pretence is over. The colours are hoisted and the true intent revealed. The shameless Brussels Beurocrats, unelected by anyone, controlled by no parliament, embarrassed by no moral qualms, are making sure not to let this fine crisis go to waste. They are aiming for autocratic power the like of which not even Bismarck ever enjoyed!