Make Europe Great Again with deals, slogans and dastardly plans

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

The European Union’s race to fill its top jobs is all that European citizens from Lisbon to Nicosia are talking about (stop sniggering at the back!).

So this week’s meeting of EU leaders in Brussels — in which they failed to reach an agreement — was bad news for those who wanted the deal all wrapped up with a bow on it so they could concentrate on watching the football and the season finales of France and the United Kingdom.

But that same failure was good news for journalists in need of something to write about and for Charles Michel, the European Council president, who gets another week at least to watch his bête noire, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, squirm.

Michel has tried several times to bring about von der Leyen’s downfall but has so far been unsuccessful — making him the Wile E. Coyote to her Roadrunner. Now he has a bit more time to hatch a new plan. Perhaps he could tie von der Leyen to the train tracks like a silent movie villain (assuming that the Belgian rail company doesn’t cancel the incoming train at the last minute for no reason)?

Much more productive was this week’s meeting of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un (are you sure about this? — ed) in which they signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership pact,” which is also what you get when you throw some random management buzzwords at a wall.

That kind of jargon is commonplace here in Brussels. So thank goodness for, er, Hungary, which unveiled “Make Europe Great Again” as the strapline for its upcoming six-month presidency of the Council of the EU.

“Make America Great Again” was of course Donald Trump’s campaign slogan when he successfully campaigned to become U.S. president in 2016 — and Trump is seeking to return to the White House in an election that will happen slap-bang in the middle of Hungary’s presidency. Incidentally, Trump’s campaign slogan this time is merely the sound of him vomiting into a bin after eating too many cheeseburgers.

To put the Hungarian slogan in context, the strapline of the Belgian Council presidency which is about to end was “Protect, Strengthen, Prepare,” which is one notch above “Live, Love, Laugh” on the banality scale. Most Council slogans are similarly awful. In 2022, the French went for “Recovery, power and belonging”, which must surely be the motto of an energy drink.

CAPTION COMPETITION

“And this is the mansion in California I’m moving to on July 5. You should visit.”

Can you do better? Email pdallison@politico.eu or on Twitter/X @pdallisonesque

Last time we gave you this photo:

Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.

“Be honest! Do you think calling snap elections was a bad idea?” by Mulinde Musoke.

Paul Dallison is POLITICO’s deputy EU editor.