If European leaders gather for a summit and nobody covers it, did it make a sound?

The Brussels bubble is elated that 'No-Drama Costa' is streamlining Council summits and adopting conclusions beforehand. But be careful what you wish for - before long they could be missing Michel.

It’s no secret that EU national leaders, with the exception of a certain president in Paris, were not terribly sad to see the departure of former European Council chairman Charles Michel this month. Here in Brussels, from the EU bubble at Schuman roundabout to the Belgian federal bubble at Parc Royal, the former Belgian prime minister had become at best a punchline and at worse a liability in the eyes of many. And so the new Council chairman Antonio Costa, a former Portuguese prime minister, has been greeted with a wave of enthusiasm. “European leaders and their envoys in Brussels are hopeful that Costa will approach the ill-defined job in a very different manner than his predecessor, who was deemed too chaotic in leading their meetings and overly focused on his own profile and professional future,” wrote Politico, dubbing Costa the “anti-Michel”.

Costa has delighted the permanent representations (the delegations representing EU national governments in Brussels who prepare the summits for their prime ministers) by promising to do away with Michel’s habit of scheduling far too many summits that would often pointlessly stretch across two days each. Summits will now be only one day, and shouldn’t be held more than the regular four times per year except in the case of a real emergency. National delegations, and indeed also journalists, were delighted earlier this week when news broke that the 27 Permanent Representatives had already fully agreed the summit conclusions before the summit even began - the first time this has happened since 2012 (under the chairmanship of the notoriously no-drama Herman van Rompuy).

“I wanted to leave the drafting work to our ambassadors, and they did an excellent job,” Costa said after the summit in response to a journalist’s question about how amazing this summit was because it ended on time. I was discussing this unusual development with some elated journalists at the summit last night, and I said we should be careful what we wish for.