Chocolate waffles from a Brussels vending machine, and other ways to survive this Brexit madness

Brexit has been full of late-night summits, and covering them is serious business. Talks often drag onto the early hours of the morning, with no definite end-point. Strange things can happen.

One rookie error is to not bring any of your own food. There are catering establishments on site, but veterans learn that you can’t be sure that they’ll have anything left or still be open when 2am rolls around.

At the March meeting of the European Council, when Brexit negotiations went to about 1am, I was reduced to eating chocolate waffles from vending machines for dinner.

Determined not to fall into the same trap at the Brexit summit on Wednesday, I came prepared with bags of pistachio nuts and other snacks. One MEP I spoke to ahead of the meeting advised me to stock up on Haribo.

After leaders go into a room together, summits are largely a waiting game to see what news comes out – either officially or unofficially – during the course of the night.

Many at the summit with presumably less onerous duties tend to get on the booze at the evening drags on. The cafes in the European Council buildings sell wine and beer, because after all, this is Brussels.

By about 10pm the bar is full of journalists and officials carrying comically overloaded trays of beers, and functionaries sipping chalices of 8 per cent Belgian ale. By 1am a good chunk of the desks in the press area also have at least a glass of beer on them.

All this takes place amid a backdrop of uncertainty. Nobody, truly, knows when the talks will be finished, not even those in the room. I advised my news desk that they could expect talks to finish between 10pm (optimistic) and 2am (pessimistic). In the end we were done by about 3am. Nothing wrong with that!

Yours,

Jon Stone
Europe correspondent