MOVING to Brussels, says Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, was like reaching “paradise”. True, that had more to do with the abundance of Flemish masterpieces in local museums than the delights of coaxing compromise from the European Union’s 28 disputatious leaders. Mr Tusk has the unenviable task of managing the European response to an endless series of crises without any real power of his own. Yet almost a year into the job he has found ways to manage, and sometimes to surpass, its limitations. As he speaks in his Brussels office, you get the sense that he might even be enjoying himself.
Few Eurocrats’ eyebrows remained unraised when Mr Tusk won his appointment. Poland, the country he had run for seven years, had barely a decade’s experience of EU membership and remained outside the euro, the union’s signature project. Mr Tusk’s abrasive style, honed in the rough-and-tumble of Poland’s young democratic politics, seemed an ill fit with the consensual methods preferred in Brussels. He worked to improve his English but, some sniff, still cannot speak French.
Mr Tusk has not swayed all his critics, though their numbers…
