Brown: only 210 days late in Brussels

So Gordon Brown is finally making a trip to Brussels to meet people in the EU institutions, including Barroso. The visit will take place next week sometime (news from EUBusiness, link thanks to Kosmopolit). But then Brown has had problems regarding Eurostar before (Telegraph, last paragraph). Overall Brown’s visit is about 210 days late by my reckoning, if you consider that both Sarkozy and Merkel visited the Commission within their respective first months in office. Perhaps his visit is not going to be the PR disaster similar to half a day late in Lisbon (pictured above left) but its awful for the leader of a large Member State nevertheless.

(Just to clarify: as far as I’m aware Brown might have been in Brussels for the December 2007 European Council but then he’s meant to attend those meetings – next week’s is the first meeting specifically arranged as far as I’m aware.)