It was a wearyingly familiar exercise. Phones were worked, diplomatic deals struck and, at a summit of the European Union's 28 leaders in Brussels on August 30th, the goods summarily delivered: Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, won the job of president of the European Council, and Federica Mogherini, Italy's foreign minister, that of the eu's high representative for foreign affairs. Sympathisers sometimes refer to the routine by which the eu apportions its most senior positions as a "delicate dance". But in its clunking awkwardness it more closely resembles the pirouetting hippopotami in Walt Disney's "Fantasia". The twin jobs, created by the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, were supposed to sharpen European decision-making, particularly on foreign policy, and to give the eu a distinct global voice. But on the two occasions on which they have been doled out, only rarely has the debate over their distribution intersected with anything happening in the world outside Brussels. Instead, questions of merit are roundly trumped by political box-ticking.
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