Is this the EU’s best cellar?
The institutions of the European Union are well equipped to drown their sorrows.
The institutions of the European Union are either very confident in the future of the EU, or well equipped to drown their sorrows if it all goes horribly wrong.
Last week European Voice reported that the European Commission has a stock of 15,500 bottles of wine worth €260,000, plus 935 bottles of spirits. This week European Voice can reveal that the Council of Ministers has a collection of 27,223 bottles of wine and 1,035 bottles of spirits from all the EU’s wine-producing member states.
The wine collection – made up of 73% red, 24% white and 3% sparkling wine – is an impressive 11,723 bottles bigger than that of the Commission.
The information has emerged because back in May, Martin Ehrenhauser, an unattached Austrian MEP, asked both institutions about their holdings of wine and spirits. Maroš Šefcovic, the commissioner for inter-institutional relations and administration, answered on behalf of the Commission. But the Council has so far been unable to agree the wording of a reply to Ehrenhauser, even though the matter was twice on the agenda of the committee of permanent representatives of member states, in July and last week.
European Voice has, however, seen a draft reply, from which the figures above are drawn. It refrains from putting a value on the collection, arguing that this is not necessary because the wines and spirits are not sold but only served at official receptions and dinners. (The Commission’s wines and spirits, by contrast, can be bought by senior officials in the protocol restaurant of the Berlaymont headquarters.) There does appear to have been a precipitous decline in annual purchases over the past several years: in 2009, the Council spent €90,000 on restocking its cellar, dropping to €37,000 in 2011 and just €5,000 this year.
Maybe the Council knows that the wine cellar is overstocked: according to the document, the average attendee at official meals or receptions consumes just one glass of 0.15l.
? The Council secretariat observed last week that 8 September was the 60th anniversary of the first Council meeting (in that back in 1952 there was a first meeting of the Special Council of Ministers of the European Coal and Steel Community). Since then there have been 3,184 Council meetings. But this did not merit opening a bottle to celebrate. Times are hard.
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