INTRINSICALLY REASONABLE

[EDIT: Liège, December 16]
Mr Herman Van Rompuy accepted the invitation to speak to the Grande Liège in December and now, for the first time, the president of the council of the European government will speak in Liège and to Grande Liège. Surely a more suitable venue that the vast railway stations that pass for government buildings in Brussels. The Palace of the Prince Bishops was the right setting and everybody was there, and after complimentary introductions and addresses about various people in various languages, Mr Van Rompuy began to speak in perfectly normal French.

He covered recent history, the crises, the transition, the oil crises, globalization, the new division of labor, the problem with the Euro zone and the European markets that exist but are not really connected. He referred to Mr Obama’s health program, to growth in 2010, to growth also from innovation and sustainability. He seemed to be not the sort of person that one would be upset by. He spoke of hope, he spoke of positive engagement, he spoke of a union of values. And all in all, one can say that he was intrinsically reasonable.

The questions that followed were of little consequence but his presentation was a refreshing one. One had read in the week’s preceding his election in the British press some rather negative comments about him; but he in fact is very much a like the old-fashioned civilized type of Englishman. Of course, something that few English people realize is how similar England and Belgium are, and it is to be hoped that his intrinsic reasonableness will have a positive effect on the mastodons of government in the EU.

SW