MIDDAY BRIEF, IN BRIEF

Today at Commission, dodging bullets on Ted Malloch and structural reform

How to annoy journalists? Tell them ‘everything is on the website.’

There were some strange exchanges at the European Commission’s midday press briefing Thursday.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is in Washington meeting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Senator John McCain, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and others. This led several journalists to ask about Ted Malloch (the self-proclaimed leading candidate to be U.S. ambassador to the EU) and whether the EU could block his nomination, if indeed he is nominated.

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Spokesperson Alexander Winterstein did his best to deflect the questions. “Everything is on the website,” became Winterstein’s catchphrase as the questions piled up.

The problem with that answer is the reason the midday briefing exists is to capture answers on camera. That is mostly because the EU wants more TV coverage and to look as transparent as possible.

Using the midday briefing to tell journalists to look up answers on a website defeats the main purpose of the briefing, in addition to annoying the EU press corps.

Winterstein eventually admitted that a single national government or EU institution could block an ambassador’s nomination.

Then there was Annika Breidthardt explaining the European Commission’s Structural Reform Support Service, and a new funding program for that service, as featured in Thursday morning’s Playbook.

Breidthardt took exception on Twitter to Playbook’s coverage, which led us to pose these 10 questions to the Commission. In Breidthardt’s comments at the midday, reporters received answers to just one of the 10 questions (though more are promised).

Here’s what we’ve learned so far: the Commission clarified that it had been using other funding lines to provide temporary money for the service, while it waited for national governments to come up with the €142 million in funding approved Wednesday. The Commission expects to be able to provide more “technical assistance” to governments “at their request.”

Breidthardt didn’t specify which governments had been receiving support or what specific support they had received, but she said a total of 19 EU countries had requested or received support.