A pride of Presidents
What is the collective noun for a gathering of Presidents? I suggest a ‘pride’. In any case, there was a pride of Presidents on view in the European Parliament this afternoon. The occasion that had taken me there was the inauguration of two new buildings, the Jozsef Antall building and the Willy Brandt building, and the Konrad Adenauer passarelle that links them together and to the rest of the parliamentary complex. For the occasion all of the surviving Presidents of the European Parliament had gathered. In a touching speech (sadly, not available on his website), the EP’s current President, Hans-Gert Pöttering, pointed out that the three personalities whose names were being remembered and honoured in this way together symbolised the democratic evolution of the European Union: from the Basic Law, through Ostpolitik to the democratisation of Central and Eastern Europe.
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