Our Man at the Press Club — Issue 2

I have been following the Saxony-Anhalt results with the mixture of alarm and dark amusement that Brussels produces in me more reliably than anywhere else. The alarm is obvious and requires no elaboration. The dark amusement is this: Donald Tusk, who spent the better part of two decades being accused by Polish nationalists of being a German agent, a traitor to Poland, a man who hated his own country and served Berlin's interests, is now the most prominent European voice warning that a rearmed Germany in the hands of the far right is a danger to the continent. He is wielding the anti-German cudgel with a fluency that only someone who has spent twenty years being beaten with it could manage. I find this darkly funny. I also find it slightly alarming that I find it darkly funny. Brussels does this to you. After long enough here, the reversals of history start to feel like the normal rhythm of things, and the normal rhythm of things starts to feel like a reversal of history. I ordered another drink. The barman, who has been here longer than most of the directorates, said nothing. This also helped.

The institutions came back from recess on the first of September, which is also when we launched. It was an unplanned coincidence but it seemed appropriate. By Wednesday the corridors were full again and everyone was talking about Saxony-Anhalt, which is to say everyone was talking about what it meant for them specifically — their directorate, their portfolio, their next five years. A man I know from one of the think tanks told me over coffee that the result was "a wake-up call." I have been hearing this phrase since 2016. I did not say this. I nodded and finished my coffee. On the way out I passed two Commission officials I recognised from a meeting the previous spring, deep in conversation about something that required lowered voices and a corner table. I did not hear what they were saying. I assumed it was about Saxony-Anhalt. In Brussels in the first week of September 2026, everything was about Saxony-Anhalt, including the things that were not about Saxony-Anhalt, which were mostly about what came after Saxony-Anhalt. I walked back to the office past the roundabout. The traffic was going in circles. I found this, as I always do, enormously consoling.