What is good enough for EU leaders will do for hacks too

Date: 20/06/1996

BY the time you read this, I shall probably be the lucky owner of an Italian beer mug with “I § summits” written on it in 11 working languages or possibly a matching pen and pencil set bearing the Italian presidency logo in blue and gold.

When I stick my nose into my party bag at this weekend's Florence gathering of heads in a state, I am bound to find a jumbo notepad, a tie-pin in the shape of the leaning tower of Pisa and a coffee table book full of glossy pictures of Venice in springtime and Tuscany in late summer ... or something very similar.

On the evidence of the last 20 or so summits, there will also be a compact disc of Umbrian zither music to add to my priceless collection of new and unused CDs - the souvenirs of long-forgotten Euro-crises in various capitals.

Do not get me wrong. I am not, as we say in English, looking a gift horse in the mouth. After all, we hacks have no right to expect any freebies whatsoever. In fact, I can't imagine who first started this bizarre ritual of handing out trinkets to scribes.

What is the point? Surely not to influence our reports on the various tourist havens and capitals that these circuses are staged in - because if any of us were prepared to put in a good word for the restaurants of Majorca or the night spots of Copenhagen in return for a bit of bribery and corruption, it would take a lot more than a plastic biro on a key ring or a yukky green tie like the one we got in Luxembourg once upon a summit. Some of my colleagues even wear it to this day.

Then there is the collection of leather-grain effect brief cases we have all got, with historic summit dates stencilled on the front. Some people really use them - usually the same people who wear the green Luxembourg ties.

Only this week, I saw two of my colleagues openly and without shame wearing the blue plastic watches we were given at the Turin summit earlier this year - but I doubt if they have felt moved to overstate the merits of the Italian presidency because of them.

Nevertheless, public relations lore decrees that the writing fraternity will kick up a fuss if it does not get a titbit or two to make up for all the hanging around while prime ministers and presidents cruise about in limousines and tuck into exotic summit meals.

This is not true. If we get nothing, there is nothing to make a fuss about. If we get a measly biro and notepad, we grumble that we have been insulted. But if we get something really significant, a really juicy freebie, then we start writing about it in one of those stories attacking EU presidency profligacy with taxpayers' money.

By that stage, journalism has started to bite the hand that needs it.

That is why the sides of smoked salmon, bottles of champagne and hampers of assorted cheeses have given way to tokens of superficial esteem which are not really worth the paper bags they are carted about in until it is time to go home.

Except for the CD, of course. The CD has saved the day for the freebie providers. It is relatively cheap, relatively impressive and, as the name implies, compact.

So every presidency pops a CD into the prezzie bag, usually something uncontroversial and certainly nothing you could shout “bribery!” or “corruption!” about.

That is why, wedged somewhere between Hank Wangford and Oasis on any Euro-hack's hi-fi shelves, you will find

JS Bach's Christmas Oratorio (thanks, France), Music from Galway, (thanks, Ireland), Music from North-Rhein Westfalia (thanks,Germany), and Aspects of Chamber Music from the Netherlands (thanks a bunch, Holland).

More Dutch summit largesse is responsible for an irresistible little toe-tapper entitled Compositions by WA Mozart Written During His Stay in the Hague and Amsterdam, from December 1765 until March 1766.

Long-forgotten presidencies have also supplied CDs, including Mahler's Symphony No. 4 and Mozart's Piano Sonatas, but my all-time favourite so far is a compilation called Irish Music 1990, which I seized with glee from my Dublin party bag of that year because, as well as contributions from Clannad and U2, it contained a number by Van Morrison.

Now that is what I call a decent freebie, I told the summit hosts. Now we are talking!

But when I got it home, it turned out that it was Van Morrison who was doing the talking, muttering his way through two minutes and one second of a soppily-scripted plug for the delights of the Irish countryside.

I meant to complain, but I never did. How can you complain about a free gift you never wanted in the first place?

So this is not a complaint, more a gentle hint to the incoming Irish presidency.

We are, frankly, a little tired of CDs, because they have stifled imagination in those financial nooks and crannies of EU government offices where the annual budget for greasing the palms of the press is allocated and spent.

And whilst Ireland's efforts to ring the changes in the past have been much appreciated, I have to confess that I do not often play my video of former Premier Charles Haughey shaking hands with a lot of important people.

The brass bowl from Rhodes was pretty, but nobody explained what it was for and it spent a year as a paint-mixing palette for the kids before I cleaned it up after seeing one in another hack's house being used as a posh table decoration.

To be honest, the most enduring summit gift I have received to date is a big grey beer mug with Manfred Rommel's signature on it. Apart from having a famous father, Manfred was mayor of Stuttgart at the time of the German summit held there, and we trooped up one by one to be greeted by the great man and handed a tankard.

Mine is now used to keep loose change of all denominations pending the introduction of a single currency.

In that way, I do not risk rubbing off Manfred's signature in the dishwasher after a night of swigging back Germanic quantities of ale - after all, he might become even more famous than his dad one day.

No, I am afraid I cannot really help whoever is even now scouring the gift shops of Donegal looking for something to buy up in bulk to amuse and delight us all at this December's summit in Dublin.

But I have a solution: on the basis that whatever is good enough for our leaders is good enough for the citizens, we will have whatever they get.