Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
If you’re reading this in Brussels, chances are you are on drugs (what do you mean you’d need to be high to get through this? How dare you!).
If you’re a Eurocrat (as EU staffers just love being called), then you are either a) definitely on drugs or b) definitely not on drugs, depending on whether you’re on the side of Brussels planning chief Pascal Smet or European Council big cheese Charles Michel.
As you may have read in these pages, Smet caused quite the kerfuffle when he suggested that EU staff shouldn’t complain about potentially being moved from the cocooned environs of the EU Quarter (as no one calls it) to the poorer Northern Quarter (as no one calls it) because there’s just as much (if not more) drug-taking in the former as there is in the latter.
Smet said that “in Schuman, they are dealing drugs too … and probably not the same drugs they are dealing [in the Northern Quarter], but probably a little bit whiter,” an apparent reference to the prevalence of cocaine in the EU area. It’s a reminder of the German media investigation from 2005 when undercover reporters armed with wet wipes polished toilet roll dispensers, door handles and other areas (ah, the glamor of journalism!) in the European Parliament in Brussels and almost every swab they took was contaminated with cocaine.
Smet has made people angry. Barend Leyts, Michel’s spokesperson, described Smet’s comments as “unacceptable,” while staff unions were up in arms and penned furious letters on official notepaper, and one MEP said Smet, the Brussels state secretary for urbanism, should resign.
Meanwhile, local media this week reported on a survey showing a massive rise in the number of people in Belgium found to be driving under the influence of narcotics. La Dernière Heure wrote that 6,488 Belgian drivers tested positive for drugs during the first half of 2022 (that’s roughly 35 a day) — an almost threefold increase compared with the same period in 2014. As anyone who has ever been near a road in Belgium will tell you, those figures seem remarkably low considering the piss-poor standard of driving in Belgium.
And despite all this, not a single TV executive has responded to my pitch for an EU version of the hit American TV show “Breaking Bad” in which an embattled head of unit and a Blue Book trainee begin making crystal meth in a van parked just off Square Ambiorix.
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Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.
“I used to watch your comedy show. I hope you’re watching mine now!” by Gustavo Szulansky.
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.