EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou arrives for a press conference on avian flu in Luxembourg. Photograph: Gerard Cerles/AFP
It is getting increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that Britain's turn at the EU's rotating presidency is somehow jinxed - that it has a reverse-Midas touch dooming all it comes into contact with. There were grand plans to drive the bloc forward, but the "period of reflection" that followed the French and Dutch votes against the constitution has led to accusations of presidential paralysis. Then there was Tony Blair's shrewd plan to hold a summit on economic reform in late October, when Angela Merkel, the Blair-minded frontrunner in the German election, would be safely ensconced in Berlin and the troublesome Schröder-Chirac alliance no more.
Soon after, Ms Merkel's poll ratings tanked. Such was the slim margin of her victory, and so long the still ongoing talks on ruling a coalition, that Blair baiting Gerhard Schröder will be taking Gemany's seat at the (much downplayed) summit.
So it is going pretty badly. Of course, when agendas were first envisaged and the UK's presidency logo first drawn up no one could have imagined this. Britain's leadership was symbolised by a flock of migratory geese, with a lead goose - presumably Mr Blair - leading the others in formation in a long, difficult but ultimately vital journey to a new destination.
How times change ... and how more malign migratory geese appear when it is probable they have spread avian flu from south-east Asia to Europe. When Markos Kyprianou, the EU health commissioner, today sat in front of the UK logo to give a press conference on the spread of the disease to Greece, political image makers must have been cringing.
