POLITICO Brussels Playbook: Sorry is the hardest word — Finding a Sputnik fanboy — AstraZeneca woes
Charles Michel said Wednesday evening that he's "saddened in two ways" by #Sofagate, after a day of radio silence. First, he's worried people may have gotten "the impression that I would have been indifferent to the [Turkish] protocolary clumsiness." That's not true, he said.
And he's also sad "because this situation has overshadowed the major and beneficial geopolitical work" that Michel believes he and the other EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, achieved on their visit to Ankara this week.
So, so sad … but not sorry: The Turks are to blame, because they take some selected rules a tad too seriously, Michel suggested. "Despite a clear desire to do the right thing, the strict interpretation by the Turkish services of the rules of protocol produced a distressing situation: the differentiated, even diminished, treatment of the President of the European Commission," wrote Michel, in French on his Facebook page in an apparent attempt to add a personal touch to an institutional reputational crisis. And what can a humble EU president do in the face of a foreign power's officials' interpretation that one is more of a boss than another EU president? Apparently nothing.
