First EU ministers’ webcast proves tedious

Endless jargon translated by monotonous interpreters characterised most of Tuesday’s first ever web-streamed EU ministers’ meetings. The meeting on Tuesday was the the first to be broadcast live on the internet, after EU leaders last month decided to inject more transparency in the meetings of the EU council - the member states’ decision-making body. But few of those citizens taking a peek into minister’s discussions probably sat out the full length of the one and a half hour finance ministers’ gathering. They are likely to have been made dizzy by the swirl of EU jargon dominating the meeting like ‘multilateral surveillance’ or ’second assessment reports’ and ‘horizontal items.’ Cameras were switched on only for the two least sensitive items on the ministers’ agenda. But just before ministers were to tackle the much more thorny topic of the EU’s stability and growth pact - the rules underpinning the euro - Finnish finance minister Eero Heinaluoma announced ‘I now end the public session of this council.’ Dutch finance minister Gerrit Zalm told reporters after the meeting that the webcast topics were ‘not attractive enough’ to get people interested. (EU Observer,July 12, 2006)

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