{"id":1959,"date":"2026-02-15T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/1959\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T14:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:00:20","slug":"the-messy-breakfast-that-delayed-an-eu-summit-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/1959\/","title":{"rendered":"The messy breakfast that delayed an EU summit \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elmundo.es\/economia\/2026\/02\/12\/698ddb83e9cf4a72698b4593.html?utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1770905584\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">lodged a protest with Rome<\/a> over the decision, according to newspaper El Mundo.<\/p>\n<p>Joking he was meeting journalists outside the castle \u201cin splendid isolation\u201d while others breakfasted, Irish Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin said \u201cwe weren\u2019t invited\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t get the necessity\u201d of a private club convening separately.<\/p>\n<p>Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, however, denied there was a rival clique forming. \u201cI think everyone was invited,\u201d he told journalists. \u201cWe don\u2019t want the perception that there is a large group of countries that wants to impose its will on other countries, like Spain. That is not the intention.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Original schedule<\/p>\n<p>Adding to the rancor, the pre-meeting delayed the arrival of the leaders who did attend, with Council President Ant\u00f3nio Costa kicking off the first session on economic growth before the three largest economies were even represented. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron were all running late after breaking bread.<\/p>\n<p>Costa \u201cstarted the discussion shortly before 11 a.m. because there are many things to discuss and he, as well as his guests, would like to stick to the original schedule as much as possible,\u201d an EU official told POLITICO.<\/p>\n<p>But it turned out those complaining they weren\u2019t invited missed out on little. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothing\u201d said one diplomat from a country that was in attendance, when asked what the discussion focused on. With 19 leaders, few got a chance to speak \u2014 while \u201cMeloni turned up late, just before it ended, and she was the one who invited them all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez lodged a protest with Rome over the decision, according to newspaper El Mundo.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[76,7,168,171,172,173,174,176,1562,1830,996,931,116],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-bart-de-wever","tag-belgium","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-growth","tag-italy","tag-macron","tag-micheal-martin","tag-migration","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-spain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}