The European Union now has its very own honours list, grandly named the European Order of Merit – with gongs dished out to Bono and Angela Merkel. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and Lech Walesa, Poland’s first president after communism, also made the cut in the inaugural honours roll call. ‘With the European Order of Merit, we honour those who did not simply believe in Europe, but who helped build it, said Roberta Metsola, the European Parliament president. This honours system is a sign of the inflated egos of some leaders in Brussels. After all, should the EU really be dishing out gongs?

The EU deserves to become a laughing-stock for this solemn but palpably bogus attempt to create an honorific tradition

The EU deserves to become a laughing-stock for this solemn but palpably bogus attempt to create an honorific tradition

The European Order of Merit is not just any old honours system either; it’s a hierarchical and almost chivalric one. Serious honorific climbers, like Mary Robinson, the former Irish president, are made Honorary Members; and, if they catch the eye of the Brussels establishment as particularly deserving, they can become Distinguished Members.

As well as Zelensky and Merkel – who was booed when her name was read out – prizes were dished out to a collection of slightly superannuated politicians and heads of government of EU states. A few EU ex-bigwigs, including an erstwhile (though unmemorable)........

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