Down and out in DC

Date: 18/04/1996

It's tough at the top, as poor old Hugo Paeman, the Commission's new ambassador to Washington, has been discovering.

Paeman has been forced to live in a plush hotel for nearly five months while his ambassadorial residence is renovated. Understandably, room service begins to pale after a time, so Paeman decided to rent a house in Georgetown, the city's diplomatic quarter.

Not so fast, Hugo. First permission was needed from a special committee to sign the lease and, naturally, the committee's next meeting was another three weeks away.

“I know the EU is bureaucratic,” a despairing Paeman told a Washington friend, “but it's so frustrating when you're a victim of it.”

But it was all worth it in the end - Paeman has taken a two-year lease on his new home, raising questions about exactly what scale of renovation work is going on at his future residence and what kind of lifestyle Europe's taxpayers are supporting.