EU Leaders Fail to Agree on Anything Except That Someone in the Press Room Must Be Stopped
Twenty-seven nations, one budget fight and a smell nobody will claim.
Satire This article is fiction. Any resemblance to sane reality is coincidental.
BRUSSELS. After two days of talks on energy, budgets and the war in Ukraine, European leaders left their summit with very few concrete decisions. The press corps, however, left with one clear and urgent priority, and it was a window.
The trouble started in the European Council’s press briefing room, where reporters waiting for a press conference kept being driven out by what one live blog described, with admirable restraint, as a smell. Nobody has confessed. Nobody has been named. Somewhere in Brussels, a person is walking around with the most closely guarded secret of the summit.
The investigation
Our imaginary sources say the EU has responded the way it responds to everything. A working group has been formed. It will report back in 2029 with a 400-page framework on Shared Air Responsibility, plus an annex arguing over whether the smell counts as a cross-border issue.
A fictional senior official, speaking on condition that we invent him, said the bloc was “deeply concerned” and “monitoring the situation closely.” He then asked if we could monitor it from further away.
Member states are reportedly split. One bloc wants an independent inquiry. Another wants to blame the coffee. A third wants to blame the journalists, on the grounds that they have been living on coffee and the fear of missing out on a briefing for 48 hours.
The real winner is the window
Analysts we also made up say the episode could finally unite Europe behind one simple idea: rooms full of people should have fresh air. “It is the first EU proposal in years with support across all 27 member states and every press pass holder,” said our pretend analyst, who then left the room very quickly.
What actually happened
This bit is real. During the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels this week, POLITICO Europe’s live blog asked, “Who is the phantom farter?” It reported that journalists waiting for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Council’s press briefing room had repeatedly been forced to put up with a foul-smelling farter in their midst, and that several reporters, including its own correspondent, had fled a diplomatic briefing the night before after an especially eye-watering emission.
POLITICO later put the episode on its list of 21 things learned at the summit, noting that the entry went viral in Brussels’ diplomatic and journalistic circles. It added that while the agenda was packed, “not many concrete decisions were taken.” India Today and Swiss outlet blue News followed up, and blue News reported that the person responsible remains unknown.
The Snark take
Summits are built to make headlines about energy prices and budgets. This one produced its most-shared story from a bit of waiting-room science. It also points to a fixable problem: press rooms where reporters are packed in for hours on coffee and no breaks. Open a window, add a few more briefings and a few fewer all-nighters, and the phantom might retire.
This piece is satire. The working group, the official and the analysts are invented. The facts in “What actually happened” come from POLITICO Europe, India Today and blue News, linked below.