Euro fudge produces ‘broad agreement’

David Cameron’s bit part in this summit is over. He’s about to leave the building for dinner with the Swedish PM. He had a chat with Neil Kinnock’s daughter-in-law – aka the Danish PM – earlier, then spend the intervening 90 minutes or so in the European Council. Now that meeting of the 27 has dispersed the 17 can get down to dinner and talks.

Has Europe risen to the challenge it set itself today? Well, it missed its own deadline, and what it presents in the early hours will be a “broad agreement” that lacks clear details and to many minds isn’t ambitious enough for the national debt crises that are mounting across Europe.

The goal now will be to make sure that enough is done in time for the Cannes G20 meeting to avoid embarrassing finger-wagging from the US and China. But it’s going to be difficult to get the euro plans fleshed out properly by then (end of next week) as many of the officials – or “sherpas” in the jargon – who will now be preparing for the G20 summit are the very people who’d be expected to work on the eurozone rescue plan.

A date for the next Ecofin meeting and eurozone finance minsters’ meeting will, I predict, be one of the few hard numbers in this summit’s conclusions.

The Polish PM, by the way, just said that there was a “short, heated debate” in the 27 meeting, the European Council, in which the “outs” warned the “ins” not to undermine the 27 as a whole.

Donald Tusk of Poland also said on the bigger question of the rescue package that there would be “political agreement” and “only technical issues” would remain to be tidied up. Asked if all decisions were cooked and ready, he said he would be “very cautious” about that.

Mr Tusk said that Silvio Berlusconi’s “I will do better” letter (I paraphrase) was reported on to the 27 by the EU president (the programme of fast and deep cuts he was told to come up with in three days flat) and was “very well received”…  Mr Berlusconi apparently didn’t speak in that session.

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