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Secrets and spokespersons

• Mark Mardell
• 3 Jul 07, 11:28 AM

Was the summit a secret stitch-up?

The has asked me to add to their website on this. The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has a problem with journalists writing for outside publications, and while I don't know if this applies to outside blogs, I do know it will take about 10 months to get an answer. So here's a compromise. I'll write about it here and they can link to it if they want. "Is an opaque and unaccountable EU preventing the Fourth Estate from doing its job?" they ask, suggesting only the British government line is available.

The short answer is that the EU is about as transparent as governments and the European Commission want it to be. It's probably a little bit more transparent than the UK government. But if the politicians want to keep something secret, they will. And I'm pretty sure this time they made two big decisions they told us nothing about.

I don't really understand the suggestion by the MST that only the British government's view is reflected. For a start "The British Government" isn't a single voice. Or it wasn't at the summit. My colleague James Landale got quite a different account of Gordon Brown's interest in the proceedings than we were getting from Downing Street. Then there is the opposition and pressure groups and business organisations, all of which have their own contacts, who may know what is going on. There are 26 other countries, all of which have (embassies and ambassadors by another name) and they all have spokespeople, who are usually quite happy to speak to us. The commission has numerous as well - the commission president has a spokesperson's service, and so do all the different departments. And there are other journalists, from other countries.

So, in a sense, the problem is not that there is just one source, but that there are too many to contact on one given day. When I'm engaged in the time-consuming business of making TV packages, I have to strip the phone calls down to the most essential ones. I rely a great deal on the teamwork and helpfulness of my colleagues on such occasions. The MST quote Stephen Mulvey as saying that , but he kept coming back to the office with juicy titbits and wrote about most of them. There are periods of the night when the doors are locked and no-one really gets a hint. But that's not the overall picture.

Would I like the meetings to be open? Well, of course. I would love to be under the table with a microphone. But it's not realistic to expect politicians to carry on sensitive negotiations in public. I have a lot of sympathy with the MPs who demanded Tony Blair should set out his position in the Commons before he went to the summit. But I also have a lot of sympathy for a poker player who's asked to make a public speech about his hand and who he thinks is bluffing. In fact, , and can be very interesting. But they don't often get reported. As John Major said, if you really want to keep something secret, say it in Parliament.

But what about the two secret deals? On the day of Gordon Brown's reshuffle it emerged that Baroness Amos had been made, as the headline on the put it, the "UK's envoy to Africa." On reading the story, this is expanded to, "The UK's nomination to the new job of EU envoy to the African Union, based in Brussels and Addis Ababa". I don't remember any mention of this new post in Brussels, though it may have been announced months back. But it was never announced that Baroness Amos had got the job. And you can take that "UK nomination" with a pinch of salt. They would never say it in public unless it was in the bag. So where was the decision taken? The foreign ministers' meeting the previous Monday? At the summit? I just don't know.

That is not the end of it. is representing the US, Russia, UN and EU. I understand the deal was worked out at the G8. The big EU countries, UK, France and Germany were there. But not the other 24 states.

I understand Mr Blair was lobbying other prime ministers at the European summit, so I guess the deal was done there. But I am only guessing. Was there a vote? Or a discussion? I haven't got a clue. But there surely must have been a formal decision some time, somewhere?

What else have they decided and will tell us later? Or not tell us at all?

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