{"id":40692,"date":"2026-04-24T02:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/40692\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:27:11","slug":"partying-or-fighting-the-different-approaches-to-being-european-council-president-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/40692\/","title":{"rendered":"Partying or fighting? The different approaches to being European Council president. \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe played a game where you had to stay awake for 24 hours and one day the lads put a shot of tequila on every single bin on the beach for 500 metres \u2014 so 10 bins, 10 shots of tequila. You had to sprint\u00a0to the first bin, gulp down the shot, sprint back. Then sprint to the second bin, down the shot, sprint back, and so on. Run, drink, run, repeat. Once, I tried to hurdle a sun-lounger, hit the top of it and went sprawling face down in the sand.\u201d<\/p>\n

That quote is either an extract from the Council document register or former Premier League footballer Keiron Dyer\u2019s account of his time in the resort town.<\/p>\n

Hopefully the leaders enjoy their time in Cyprus, but what a shame that Orb\u00e1n \u2014 who is still Hungary\u2019s prime minister \u2014 didn\u2019t show up to ruin the whole thing (again!). He would have had the perfect opportunity to play spoiler; sitting at the dining table, heckling, getting wasted on zivania<\/a> and throwing chicken bones at French President Emmanuel Macron. Disappointing behavior from a normally reliable disruptor.<\/p>\n

Would the EU have gone to Ayia Napa under Costa\u2019s predecessor in the job, Charles Michel?<\/p>\n

The former Belgian prime minister thrust himself back into the limelight this week. First, he gave an interview to the Brussels Times<\/a> in which he brought up his old adversary, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose style he called \u201cauthoritarian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interestingly, he was photographed for the article in his office, surrounded by six chairs and two sofas \u2014 which begs the question: How many people are visiting Charles Michel? Or is he now working as a doctor\u2019s receptionist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe played a game where you had to stay awake for 24 hours and one day the lads…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[428,10006,250,650,2698,14426,3941,242,422,1431,7098,329,7362,403,350,328],"class_list":{"0":"post-40692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-antonio-costa","8":"tag-antonio-costa","9":"tag-charles-michel","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-competition","12":"tag-cyprus","13":"tag-declassified","14":"tag-doctors","15":"tag-emmanuel-macron","16":"tag-hungary","17":"tag-migration","18":"tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-turkey","21":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","22":"tag-viktor-orban","23":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116457324121566335","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}