Malta is making the headlines this morning in Brussels following a gaffe by the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy as he apparently forgot that the island has been a member of the euro zone for more than three years.
Just before the start of the official summit dinner yesterday night, Mr Van Rompuy, ‘tweeted’ a message in French stated that ‘Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Romania, Malta and Cyprus have accepted to join the Pact for the Euro’ – a set of new rules underpinning the EU’s currency.
The only problem was that Mr Van Rompuy’s presidential slip was immediately picked up by attentive journalists as it showed the former Belgian Prime Minister forgot that both Malta and Cyprus have been members of the eurozone since January 1, 2008 – more than three years ago.
Mr Van Rompuy’s attention was immediately drawn by the other leaders.
Just 20 minutes later, at 9.20pm – another tweet arrived to the more than 10,000 ‘friends’ on euHvR – Mr Van Rompuy’s twitter account.
“euHvR [corr] Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Romania, Lithuania and Latvia announced that they are joining up to the Euro Plus Pact.”
The summit is expected to end this afternoon.