Who’s who in the EU?

Date: 25/07/1996

All these names and titles in Europe are, admittedly, confusing.

When the US TV network CNN did a live telephone interview with Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan to discuss the Helms-Burton Act on trade with Cuba, the interviewer announced him as “the Economics . . . (pause) . . . the vice-president of the Economic Commission”.

Just to clarify matters, they then put up a picture of Dick Spring, Irish foreign minister and current president-in-office of the Council of Ministers (but not, of course, of the EU).

No one is immune from Appellation Non-contrôlée Disease (AND). National Public Radio in the US introduced one of its morning editions on Helms-Burton with comments from Brittan's spokesman Michael Guilford. Michael is in fact Peter.

But the radio did get it right in a sense, because they did not describe him as president of anything at all.