All roads lead to Luxembourg. The only question is why?

Date: 11/04/1996

IF it's April, it must be Luxembourg.

And it is, so here we are, on day one, April Fool's Day and the fools are holding emergency talks to get everyone off the beef hook.

We have all raced down the E411, one or two per car, hundreds of us, and nobody has given a thought to the fact that this thing is bound to go on and on and on, and so, after a missed night's sleep and no change of socks, a lot of disgruntled people are going to start saying very rude things about Luxembourg again.

By the end of April, this poor city's ears will be burning. And then it will all be forgotten until June. And then again until October. Poor Luxembourg.

But this is no way to run Europe.

The time is now 2.26 am, it is day two of April and we are still in the Grand Duchy, according to a few who have stumbled beyond the bizarre stained-glass windows of the tower building up here on Kirchberg Plateau. But, quite frankly, it might just as well be cloud-cuckoo land.

At lunch time yesterday, we all did the scenic trip up to the restaurant on the 22nd floor. We gazed out across the nation. Down below, little cars darted up and down the motorway and we all wanted to be in them, going anywhere.

On a clear day up here, they say, you can see fog for miles. The question is, will anybody ever find us?

It is now nearly dawn. We are still here. The subject is still beef. There has been very little sleep tonight, but at least if this farce were being played out in Brussels, what little sleep there might have been would have been at home.

Instead, we are all forking out for virtually unused hotel rooms. Why are we here and not there?

Look, I have absolutely nothing against Luxembourg, except that it is in the wrong place.

These days, there isn't time to hang around 200 kilometres from the heart of Europe. It might have worked in the Community of six, when there was little else to do but commute between all the member states, but we really don't have time for all this now.

Yet we honour this arcane treaty notion about the right of Luxembourg to claim a share of the commercial spin-off which someone is bound to gain from the very fact of the EU.

Luxembourg is, of course, the richest country in the entire world, per capita. I know because I read it in a world-wide survey. It is the only way of knowing. Because where are the symbols of such staggering wealth that outshines even that of the Arab Emirates and Monte Carlo?

I suspect this economic distinction results less from loadsa-money than from not-so-many-people. Luxembourg was out when the statisticians came to call. The Grand Duchy was closed, as it so often is.

And when you divide a few squillion francs between the head waiter at the Royal Hotel and the drivers on the taxi-rank down at the station, you come out with seriously impressive figures about per capita spending power.

I'll tell you why Luxembourg is so rich, my friends, if you want to know. It is loaded simply because last night countless legions of people like me spent anything up to 10,000 francs each, with pathetic gratitude, for the last remaining hotel rooms in the city and then used them, if at all, for about two or three hours.

And because, if I may use chronological licence to fast-forward a bit, I happen to know that tonight, as we enter day three of April, the second night of non-stop marathon, dramatic earth-shattering talks, some of us will pay for hotel rooms that we don't see at all.

The reception chap down at the Hotel Europe near the Kirchberg bridge has it well sorted out. I went in, because if I was booking a non-hotel room for another non-night, I wasn't going to pay another near-enough 10,000 francs for the privilege of not turning up. At a shade under 3,000 francs, I snapped up his very last chambre.

It is, I am sure, just as good as the Royal for not sleeping in, although I never saw it. I paid for it in advance to guarantee that I would have somewhere not to go to, and I still have the key.

And that's why this place is so rich.

But money can't buy you love, Luxembourg and, it now being 6.14 am and not a beef sandwich in sight, your name is mud, to put it politely.

Whatever happened to the free market and fair competition? Why, Karel Van Miert, if you're listening, doesn't Luxembourg have to compete openly for the EU's custom?

If it did, it would lose on geographical grounds alone. Nothing else matters, not its deep ravines, its ducal palace, or the architectural grandness of its railway station.

Right now, the only thing that counts is that we all face a 200- kilometre hike back home whenever our ministers settle their differences. Weary hacks, officials and national civil servants all risk running themselves off the road with fatigue in the name of outdated common market protocol.

Day three and the subject, as ever, is beef.

What is the dead weight of a dozing spokesman? Depends if it's a spokesman for milking or for tearing into fleshy strips and hanging out to dry.

According to all available evidence, there is still no proven link between what a spokesman says and what gets into the newspapers, but nevertheless we must all take precautions.

But the real issue, of course, is knickers. And shampoo. Where is the nearest place in this God-forsaken spot (sorry Luxembourg, nothing personal) for the bare necessities of life? Is there time to climb down off the Kirchberg into Place Dame, with its beefburger joints and bandstand, to freshen up a bit?

Yes, probably. You could almost certainly go into town, negotiate a bank loan, refurbish your entire wardrobe, have lunch and be back before the latest updated annexes to the revised draft compromise as modified by the Greek delegation have been turned into 11 partially-working languages before being torn up.

Did you know that 98.7&percent; of all Luxembourgers go abroad for their holidays? Another survey gem there, and one which is easier to believe. The only question is what on earth do the other 1.3&percent; of the population do? Are they not allowed any time off?

Dawn is trying to breach the stained-glass security cordon and the haggling goes on. But the haggling isn't the problem. It goes on everywhere, especially in the best-run EU institutions.

The question, and I apologise for repeating it but we have been up now for 43 hours, is why here?

It is a question which will be repeated often before the month is through.

Now I must dash, because the talks are just breaking up and there is word that Mr Franz Fischler will be giving a detailed press conference on the outcome.

“In which room?” I hear someone with mad-hack disease yelling.

But the question is not which room, but which country?

And the answer is Belgium, of course. Two hundred kilometres lie between us and the Commissioner's summation - and they reckon it's the cows that are mad.