For weeks a tug-of-war has been raging over the posts of EU president and foreign affairs minister.

The daily Postimees (Estonia) takes issue with this spectacle:

“The show we are seeing now is another example of the famous exception proving the rule according to which any publicity is supposed to be good publicity. The longer this nonsense goes on, the more the EU’s reputation suffers both in the eyes of its citizens as well as abroad.

… It’s like a farce, but most commentators see only a lack of democracy as the reason for this. That’s the wrong idea. To talk of democracy in a context like the EU where it’s simply about executing the decisions of the governments of the different member states would be like talking about democracy in the Soviet Union: Both are the wrong place to look for it.

To understand what goes on in Brussels tomorrow one has to be aware that the vote is not an exercise in democracy but an exercise in intergovernmental negotiations.”