Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. TV advert voice: “Coming soon, the album you’ve all been waiting for: ‘Donald Trump and Nicki Minaj’s Covers Record.’ Featuring hits like… ‘Ice Ice Baby’ by Vanilla Ice, ‘Tiny Hands’ by Fiona Apple, ‘Orange Crush’ by R.E.M., ‘Opposites Attract’ by Paula Abdul, ‘Something Stupid’ by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, ‘Daddy’ by Beyoncé, ‘(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country’ by Sparks, ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ from the soundtrack to ‘The Lion King,’ and (sadly) many more. Available on Spotify and in all bad record stores near you.” This week saw rapper Nicki Minaj — whose hits include “Super Bass,” “Starships” and “Anaconda” — cozy up to U.S. President Donald Trump, whose own hits include “Covfefe,” “SAD!” and “Threatening to invade Greenland.” The rapper, born in Trinidad and Tobago, declared herself Trump’s “number one fan” on Wednesday, showing off her “gold card” visa, which offers applicants residency and a path to U.S. citizenship for the sum of $1 million — a relative bargain compared to the $1 billion asking price to join Trump’s Board of Peace. The mutual love-in also saw Trump joke that he would grow out his nails to emulate the rapper, then hold her hand while another speaker took to the podium. Ahh — unless you look at the footage, then it’s more urgh. Trump’s musical taste seems to extend only to those who say nice things about him. That’s why he’s no fan of Bad Bunny (who will play the Super Bowl half-time show on Feb. 8) or Green Day (who will play before the game begins). He told the New York Post they are both “terrible,” adding: “I’m anti-them.” The president also said he was skipping this year’s Super Bowl because the venue — Santa Clara, California — is “just too far away.” Stating how much you love Trump, it’s fair to say, isn’t common among musicians these days. Bruce Springsteen released a song called “Streets of Minneapolis” this week about the violence in the city and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents. It’s a powerful song that mentions “bloody footprints, where mercy should have stood, and two dead left to die on snow-filled streets.“ Springsteen’s song also contains the line: “King Trump’s private army from the DHS, guns belted to their coats, came to Minneapolis to enforce the law, or so their story goes.“ Though this is slightly undone for me — and surely only me — by the fact that I always confuse DHS (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) with DFS (a British discount sofa retailer that’s had a sale on for decades). Trump’s no fan, of course, and has previously called Springsteen a “dried-out prune of a rocker.” Meanwhile, Neil Young gave everyone in Greenland free access to his music and documentary archive to “ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats you are experiencing from our unpopular and hopefully temporary government.” Young also reiterated his objection to Amazon due to CEO Jeff Bezos’s support for Trump. In October, the musician had announced he would be removing his catalog from the streaming platform Amazon Music. Young has form here, having similarly called for his music to be removed from Spotify in 2022 because the streaming giant hosts podcasts by Joe Rogan, who has come under fire for spreading medical misinformation. After that news, I had tweeted that Young’s most famous backing band is Crazy Horse and Rogan has taken the drug ivermectin, a horse dewormer, which resulted in a mass pile-on by the American right — and this was before the platform became X and a burning dumpster fire being pushed off a cliff by Elon Musk. CAPTION COMPETITION ” A little horse?” “Well, I have been doing a lot of shouting recently.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last time, we gave you this photo: French President Emmanuel Macron chose to wear sunglasses at the World Economic Forum due an eye health problem. | Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “I wish the Americans would turn off that blinding orange light on stage.“ by Tom Morgan

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. This week, there’s an exciting opportunity for (rich) readers: I’m trying to raise $1 billion to get a seat on Donald Trump’s Board of Peace — or maybe that should be Bored of Peace! So far — after checking behind the sofa, harassing colleagues at POLITICO Towers, and busking outside Exki on Schuman roundabout (just about finished “Here Comes The Sun” when the police arrived) — I’ve got the princely sum of €14.28, which, even if Trump tanks the economy by naming Liz Truss as chair of the Fed, isn’t quite enough. So please give generously (ideally using those big checks — or cheques, if you will — that they used to brandish when schools and hospitals raised large sums of money). The Board of Peace seems like such an exciting opportunity to potentially sit alongside such noted lovers of peace as Russia’s Vladimir Putin (invited), Belarus’ Aleksandr Lukashenko (accepted), and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (who said he’ll join) as well as Trump himself, who so loves peace that he now has a Nobel Peace Prize, albeit with someone else’s name on it. And who could question its motives? At the launch event for the Board of Peace, Trump said the world is “richer, safer and much more peaceful than it was just one year ago.” Wise words. There are, however, questions to be asked. For example, what language will its meetings be conducted in? English, of course! As Trump made clear in his speech at Davos (which I will never not confuse with Davros, leader of the Daleks in the TV show “Doctor Who”), without the U.S. getting involved in World War II, Europeans would be speaking German now, which would have come as something of a surprise to locals in *checks notes* Switzerland. Now I know what you’re thinking: Can individuals even be part of the Board of Peace? It’s unclear, but we all know that if Trump sees a chance to make some money by signing up wealthy people, he’ll seize it faster than you can say “Iceland.” There’s no way that Gianni Infantino, full-time administrator of the Donald Trump Fan Club and sometime head of football governing body FIFA, hasn’t already been in touch about joining. At the time of writing, Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, and the shark from “Jaws” had yet to respond to their invitations to join the board, perhaps because they are waiting on a venue for its meetings — the options being (in ascending order of scariness) a haunted castle, the Death Star and Mar-a-Lago. CAPTION COMPETITION ” Finally we have an answer to the question ‘what if Temu remade ‘Top Gun?’'” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last time, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “Let me introduce the next chair of the Fed.” by David Kemp

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. First came Erik the Red (who got his nickname because he loved a glass of pinot noir with dinner). Erik was what we might now call a troubled soul. Born in Norway, the family moved to Iceland because his father committed “a number of killings,” according to Greenland’s tourism department (it’s never a good sign when people stop counting how many murders you’ve done). Alas, the apple didn’t fall far from the birch tree and Erik was kicked out of Iceland for murder after a dispute with a neighbor (who presumably borrowed his lawnmover and didn’t return it) resulted in a number of deaths. We’ve all been there. So Erik rocked up in Greenland, becoming the first viking on the island. He’s credited with coining the name “green land” as either a) cunning marketing trick to lure people there, or b) because in old norse, the word “green” meant “not in the slightest bit green.” One of Erik’s sons was Leif Eriksson, who was the first European to reach North America — some 500 years before that slacker Christoper Columbus. Incidentally, 400 years after settling in Greenland, the vikings abandoned the island in part, according to researchers from Harvard and Penn State universities, because of rising sea levels caused by climatic shift. Yes, the vikings were worried about climate change. Woke! Which brings us nicely (if skipping more than 1,000 years) to the present day, when Donald the Orange has his sights set firmly on Greenland. So keen is Trump on acquiring Greenland for the U.S. that he had Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance (playing the roles of good cop and weird cop) meet with the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers in Washington this week. On a scale of 1 to Ambushed Like Zelenskyy Was, it was about a 5; not a disaster but problematic enough that Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Denmark and Vivian Motzfeldt of Greenland needed to head to the car park for a calming post-meeting cigarette. While we wait for Trump to make his move, new polling from Reuters/IPSOS reveals that just one in five Americans supports the president’s efforts to get hold of Greenland. Mind you, in 1999, a Gallup poll revealed that 18 percent of Americans thought the sun revolved around the Earth (and, perhaps worse, 3 percent said they didn’t have an opinion), so we can take polling in the U.S. with a pinch of Sassuma Sea Salt sourced from the Nuuk fjord. CAPTION COMPETITION ” Pasteurized? Of course it’s passed my eyes. What a stupid question.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last time, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “A missile the size of my finger would surely get up Putin’s nose!” by Adrian Casey

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column, back after a refreshing two-center winter break in Venezuela and Greenland. The question on everyone’s lips this week has surely been: “Has Gerardus Mercator fooled Donald Trump?” Mercator was a 16th century Flemish geographer and cartographer whose legacy is the Mercator Projection (alas not a 1970s progressive rock band but a way of drawing maps). It shouldn’t be confused with Mercosur, the EU’s planned trade pact with four South American countries, which they also started negotiating in the 16th century. Anyway, the Mercator Projection is great when it comes to navigation but it does distort world maps by making certain parts of the globe appear larger than they are, including Greenland. Which begs the question, does Trump really want Greenland for its untapped oil and gas reserves and its rare earth minerals (which aren’t really rare, so why don’t we call them ‘earths’?) or does he just fancy taking over an island that’s large but not quite as large as he thinks it is? Answers on a postcard to the White House. The reality is that Trump tends to get what he wants and Greenland could well end up in U.S. hands (to get ahead of the curve, I’ve already secured the naming rights for the island’s prospective Major League Baseball team, the Nuuk Nukes). Europe’s only option to stop Trump appears to be to force him to eat the national dish, suaasat, which is a soup made of seal, whale, reindeer, or seabirds, or to offer him something else European instead. Is there an EU country that he could be offered instead of Greenland (besides Hungary, which he already has shares in)? Luxembourg’s got money? Malta’s got sunshine? Ireland’s got one of Trump’s golf courses? Perhaps he’ll accept a prize. Can the EU strongarm the Norwegians into giving Trump the Nobel Peace Prize (or even the “Noble Peace Prize” as he wrote on Truth Social this week)? None of this seems likely to work but help may be at hand courtesy of an unusual source, the world of ski jumping. Greenlanders need to be able to ski (at least in part because they don’t have roads connecting towns), but the world of winter sports has been rocked by a scandal involving ski jumpers. Turns out that, in order to gain that all-important competitive advantage, some male ski jumpers have been injecting their genitals with acid. Turns out that injecting the penis with hyaluronic acid (which is normally found in anti-aging creams) not only makes it, er, younger but also larger (don’t, whatever you do, inject it with hydrochloric acid). That could mean you get to wear a slightly larger ski suit, and that larger surface area means there’s more fabric to catch the wind and therefore potentially further jumps. Surely this kind of behavior would put Trump off owning the island. Mind you, it involves cheating (and there have long been claims that while Trump plays a lot of golf, he doesn’t always stick to the letter of the law) and a dubious medical procedure (Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, did once claim to have had a brainworm), so maybe injecting your penis with acid will become official U.S. health policy. CAPTION COMPETITION ” Emmanuel, that pretend gun is the closest you’ve come to sending me weapons.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last time, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “Trump’s coming to get you.” by Anita Evans

Welcome to a special year-end edition of Declassified, a humor column Thanks for nothing, 2025. It was a burning dumpster fire of a year and one in which most of us wished we were either Suni Williams or Butch Wilmore. Williams and Wilmore were astronauts who were supposed to be in space for around 10 days but ended up staying for nearly 10 months, thus not getting back to Earth until March this year and missing almost three months of the misery. “Welcome back, guys. There’s good news and bad news: the good news is you’re home safe and sound; the bad news is Kamala Harris didn’t win the election.” The election winner, Donald Trump, of course, dominated the news agenda in the same way that a bear would dominate the honey section if let loose in a supermarket. He slapped hastily thought-out tariffs on everything and everyone, including uninhabited islands near Antarctica. And he spectacularly fell out with Elon Musk, who, like Lazarus, flew too close to the bright (orange) sun. In Europe, it’s been a strange year. Germany swapped Captain Charisma himself, Olaf Scholz, for Friedrich Merz, who always looks like you’ve just taken his supermarket parking space, even though he was patiently waiting ages for it. France and Italy swapped places, with the latter the model of stability while the former turned itself into (an exquisite, handcrafted) basket case in which so many people became prime minister that, at the time of writing, Eric Cantona is the holder of that office. In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen has been about as popular as unwanted invasive surgery and survived not one but three confidence votes in the European Parliament, which these days leans so far to the right that it’s in danger of collapse. But there have been some success stories. The new pope seems nice, meaning the Catholic Church has broken the good pope/bad pope cycle of recent times. And António Costa does a much better job as European Council president — a role that, as far as we can make out, involves ordering enough sparkling water for meetings — than Charles Michel did. Admittedly, a discarded Exki sandwich wrapper would have outperformed Michel, but these days, you take the wins where you can get them. So here’s to the sunlit uplands of 2026. It can’t be worse, can it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUOTE OF THE YEAR: “It’s a shitty sign for European majorities, it is a shitty sign for Europe, it is shitty for the fight against climate change.” Greens group co-leader Terry Reintke did not like the EU’s conservatives teaming up with the far right in the European Parliament. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHO’S BEEN UP I kissed a PM: In the immortal words of Avril Lavigne: He was a prime minister, she was a pop star, can I make it any more obvious? Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry are officially dating. Turns out all it takes is a cringeworthy space-tourism stunt and a resignation-in-disgrace for a power couple to blossom. There’s hope for everyone, folks. The survivalist: Commission President Ursula von der Leyen managed to survive a total of three no-confidence motions this year. Far-right and far-left parties both took their shot, proving it’s not about ideology — they just don’t like her. And people say society is hopelessly divided. WHO’S BEEN DOWN U.S.-EU relations: Remember when the U.S. actually liked the EU? Vice President JD Vance doesn’t. At the Munich Security Conference, he took a swing at European democracies, insisting their biggest threat isn’t Russia but their own culture wars. With friends like these … Royal titles: The Duke of York, Prince Andrew, is no more. He shall now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Which, as far as middle names go, is punishment enough. His big brother Charlie also cut his public funding: If Mountbatten ever needs a job, there’s always Pizza Express. BACKHANDED AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING USE OF POLITICAL CHAOS IN A DEMOCRACY What a year it’s been for Marine Le Pen and French politics, which gave Italy a rare year off from being Europe’s chaotic mascot. The leader of the far-right National Rally party has been banned from running for office for five years, after an EU Parliament fake-jobs scam in March. In theory, that knocks her out of the 2027 presidential race, assuming we still have functioning democracies by then. Her career should have flatlined right there. But Marine is no quitter, especially with right-hand man Barbie Bardella waiting — a tad too eagerly — in the wings to pick up the mantle. All she needed was for the French electorate to get distracted by fresher scandals and let her quietly plot her comeback. Enter: President Emmanuel Macron and a case study for confident-straight-white-men-bordering-on-delusion syndrome. He burned through prime ministers faster than Samantha Jones cycled through boyfriends, seemingly baffled each time one bailed. It’s almost cute that he never once considered he might be the problem. Maybe it is time for a woman president to bring stability to France after all: Look at Italy and its absolutely-not-neo-fascist government, for instance. Oh, how the tables have turned. CAPTION COMPETITION OF THE YEAR “He’s coming! Quick, be a statue.” by Willem Callens

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. Declassified is taking two weeks off to get a full back tattoo of Keir Starmer. Spare a thought for any intrepid travellers who were planning on a nice lunch in the restaurant at the Thon Hotel on Brussels’ Rue de la Loi on Thursday. More specifically, spare a thought for any intrepid travellers who were planning on a nice lunch in the restaurant at the Thon Hotel on Brussels’ Rue de la Loi on Thursday who don’t like eating nori-crusted cod fillet, crushed potatoes, glazed and charred leeks, and grey- shrimp bisque with miso while listening to the song “Crazy Frog” performed using the horns of tractors. Yes, on Thursday, the farmers were back in Brussels! And (spoiler alert!) they aren’t happy. And yet, despite the noise and manure, is there anything more pro-European than a bunch of farmers from across the continent gathering in Brussels and setting things on fire just meters from where prime ministers and presidents are discussing how to get money to Ukraine? Perhaps only if they all headed straight to Provence for two months. Incidentally, French, Irish and Greek colleagues said the farmers being in Brussels reminded them of being back home because of the protests, the tractors and the tear gas, respectively. Now that’s European unity! For those outside the Belgian capital, the best way to describe farmers’ occasional trips to Brussels is like when the fans of an English football team arrive in your city and smash the place up, but with more rubber boots and less sunburned flesh. The farmers arrive by tractor — so presumably had to set off in 1998 — and set up camp near the headquarters of the EU institutions, blocked from getting too close by the Belgian police (who will arrest the average citizen without a second’s thought if they put out the wrong bin bag on the wrong day — probably — but will let a farmer set fire to an oil barrel and not even bat an eyelid). To alleviate the boredom, they play tunes on their tractor horns. Many are hard to identify, but the following were heard from POLITICO Towers on Thursday morning: “Baby Shark,” “Barbie Girl,” “Crazy Frog,” the first half of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme song, and even some Mozart. Perhaps the (mostly) horrible musical choices are the farmers’ version of Guantánamo Bay, where American troops tried to break prisoners by blasting them with loud music. It’s not just music; there’s also fire, as farmers love setting things on fire. What they perhaps have failed to realize is that no one who lives in Brussels has seen the sun for months, so a burning pile of tires is a welcome blast of light amid the gray. Last year, I even witnessed a farmer release gallons of slurry — that’s liquid shit, for the cityfolk — across Rue de la Loi in what may have been the most dramatic thing I’ve seen since the opening 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan.” CAPTION COMPETITION “Don’t tell anyone but I ordered the EU summit caterers to pour the hottest hot sauce all over Viktor Orbán’s food.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last week, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “So remember, after the voters oust us in the next elections, let’s meet in Tenerife for our boys’ night out, OK?” by Boris Dusek

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. “I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot no deputy” — Bob Marley, 1973 “I love a serif, so I had to shoot the Calibri” — Marco Rubio, 2025 The United States is breaking up with a font because it’s just not their type. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered American diplomats to use the Times New Roman font in official communications and drop Calibri, which was brought in during the Joe Biden administration and is now described as a “wasteful” diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters. The State Department started using Calibri because it’s easier for people with visual disabilities to read. But these are the Donald Trump years, so those people seemingly no longer matter. As well as being yet another blow for those with poor eyesight, this is surely yet another example of the EU being shut out by the Americans. Calibri was the brainchild of a Dutchman, Lucas de Groot, whereas Times New Roman was designed for The Times of London newspaper. It does, however, fit with studies that have been carried out into the politics of typefaces, which suggest that sans serif fonts (such as Calibri) are more popular with liberals, while conservatives prefer a serif font (of which Times New Roman is one of the most popular). This being the Trump administration, it was something of a surprise that the font Trump Mediaeval wasn’t chosen (and yes, that is an actual font — dating from 1954 — and not a description of how ICE raids are conducted). Maybe they should have chosen an American font, such as (and you knew this was coming) Comic Sans or, perhaps even Wingdings. Speaking of which, back in 2019 the British Conservative Party tweeted that “MPs must come together and get Brexit done” in Comic Sans, in what may have been a low point even for Brexit. It’s not just fonts that are being targeted by Trump, it’s also tourists, who may have to hand over five years of social media activity before they are allowed into the U.S. (imagine reading five years’ worth of someone’s LinkedIn posts? The horror! The horror!) The new rules would also require travelers to provide emails, phone numbers and addresses used in the last five years. Maybe the customs and border agents can reply to all those unopened and unwanted emails offering to “redesign my website.” CAPTION COMPETITION “Guys, we practiced this, it’s high-five, fist bump, jazz hands.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last week, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “Look, if I were you I would take over Pakistan.” by Albrecht Rothacher

Paul Dallison writes Declassified, a weekly satirical column. Looking for a Christmas gift for someone who is a) interested in French politics and b) loves often poor writing? Then fear not, because Nicolas Sarkozy’s prison memoir is here! The former French president’s “Diary of a Prisoner” comes to all good prison libraries and bookstores on Dec. 10, but POLITICO has an advance copy and has read it despite common sense dictating it was a terrible idea. As a reminder, Sarkozy (prison number 320535) spent 20 days in prison, and his book is 216 pages long — that’s just under 11 pages per day of incarceration. Sarkozy, 70, was imprisoned after being found guilty of allowing “close collaborators” and “unofficial intermediaries” to try to obtain funding from Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya for his 2007 presidential run. That made him the first former French head of state to end up behind bars since Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain. “I want to make it clear that this is not a novel,” Sarkozy writes in the intro, thereby dashing any lingering hope that the book might have an interesting narrative arc rather than being an account of one man’s stay in jail for less than three weeks with two bodyguards in the cell next door. In terms of suspense, there’s little, as Sarkozy describes his prison cell as being like a “low-end hotel.” Although that, of course, relies on the reader’s believing that Sarkozy has ever stayed in an Ibis budget hotel (breakfast not included, with a view of the car park). Sarkozy’s acclimation to life behind bars provides quite an insight into a man who has enjoyed the wealth and trappings of fame. Early on he tries to open a window and “immediately regretted it” because of the noise it caused. “A prisoner was relentlessly striking the bars of his cell with a metal object. This racket lasted several minutes. It seemed endless to me. The atmosphere was threatening. Welcome to hell!” It’s unclear if the bar-striking prisoner was also the “neighboring inmate [who] spent part of his time singing ‘The Lion King’ and the other part pounding on the bars of his cell with a spoon.” Here’s hoping it wasn’t a soup spoon, as that would have been a massive faux pas. Thankfully, despite the noise and the inadequacy of the bed — “I had never felt a harder mattress, not even during my military service” while “the pillows were made of a strange material, perhaps plastic, and the blankets were blankets in name only” — Sarkozy managed to sleep until 7 a.m. his first night behind bars. That’s despite knowing that “my future neighbors would be, depending on the case, Islamist terrorists, rapists, murderers, or drug traffickers. A delightful prospect!” There are some lovely details in the book, including that Sarkozy’s cell had been adapted for “inmates with reduced mobility, for example, people in wheelchairs.” As a result, “the mirror was firmly fixed to the wall at a height that allowed me to clearly see all the details of the belt of my trousers. On the other hand, I had to bend double to comb my hair or trim my beard.” Thank goodness Sarkozy is only 1.65 meters tall (or 5 feet 5 inches, if you prefer), quite a bit below the average in France. We also get details of the daily routine. “Wake up early. Make the bed immediately. Wash, shave, dress properly. No pajamas, no negligence.” That would make a great Sarkozy family motto: Sine pyjamatibus, sine negligentia. Lunch is delivered at a scandalously early 11:30 a.m., “and I truly had no appetite. I don’t think I missed much by declining the meal offered in small plastic trays, which, without meaning any offense to whoever had prepared them, were not very appealing.” He later says the smell of the food trays made him feel “nauseous” and decries the “soggy baguette” offered at lunchtime. To be fair, that does sound awful. Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni’s “first words upon waking were: ‘What a nightmare! What have we done to deserve all this horror?'” — which is definitely how ordinary people speak. | Henrique Campos/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images He spends the day reading. Before his incarceration Sarkozy told Le Figaro that he would be taking with him a copy of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” — the story of a man who escapes prison after being falsely accused of treason and locked up without trial — along with a biography of Jesus Christ by Jean-Christian Petitfils (which tells the story of, well, you probably know how that one goes). But there is the customary exercise break. “The walks in the courtyard were surreal,” Sarkozy writes. “There were few words exchanged. Each man remained locked in his own thoughts, his own story. Pain has a way of making people silent. Suffering rarely likes noise.” Unless you’re banging a spoon against the bars of the cell while singing “Circle of Life.” He uses the gym equipment daily, imagining himself running in the forest of Saint-Léger-en-Yvelines or the seashore of Cap Nègre. Alas, the post-workout shower was a challenge. “Perhaps out of fear that an inmate might hang himself, there was no showerhead, only a thin trickle of water.” He adds: “The worst part was that this thin stream of water stopped very quickly, like a timer. You constantly had to find the button and press it” — which sounds like the showers in any given public swimming pool. Before we get to the time in prison, there are precious moments of pre-prison life. His wife Carla Bruni’s “first words upon waking were: ‘What a nightmare! What have we done to deserve all this horror?'” — which is definitely how ordinary people speak. Sarkozy also writes about his meeting with current President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace, days before he headed to jail. “I had nothing to say to him and had little desire for a friendly chat.” Macron, however, told Sarkozy that he would have him transferred to another, supposedly safer, prison. Sarkozy was having none of it and refused “preferential treatment” — apart from the bodyguards next door. Bruni is a regular visitor, of course, but Sarkozy reveals that former Prime Minister Michel Barnier also requested a visit. Having been the EU’s point man on Brexit, Barnier is used to dealing with impossibly grim conditions. Lots of other political figures get a mention. Sarkozy thanks far-right leader Marine Le Pen for her support, and far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon for not saying anything. But he slams his electoral opponent Ségolène Royal for “claiming, without a hint of irony, that she lost the 2007 election because of Gadhafi’s money!” and says former Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau “called me regularly, but did nothing more publicly.” Thankfully, after these 20 days of “hell,” Sarkozy’s appeal is held and he is released from prison and able to start penning his jailhouse diaries — just in time for them to become a Christmas best-seller (maybe).

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. Who’s the greater danger to society — a drunken raccoon, the average user of an e-scooter in Brussels, or people who have to walk in front of the EU’s diplomatic service? That was a trick question. It’s all of the above! This week, a raccoon (let’s call him Rocky to honor our elders and betters) in the town of Ashland, Virginia fell through the ceiling of a liquor store, smashed some bottles, got very drunk and passed out on the bathroom floor. We’ve all been there! We didn’t use to have raccoons in Europe — like baseball caps, Flaming Hot Cheetos and guns, they’ve been imported from America. Yet even raccoons, drunk or otherwise, have yet to make regular appearances in the EU Quarter of Brussels. For those readers who are unfamiliar with this small area, which is home to the European Union’s main institutions, imagine a sodden, post-apocalyptic wasteland where every other building is a construction site that may never be finished. A wasteland that is populated not by zombies with ripped clothes making ungodly growling sounds, but by people in mid-range suits making ungodly growling sounds (or French, as it’s sometimes known). To add to the tension, you need to be on the lookout for people riding e-scooters with reckless abandon (fun, er, fact: the collective noun for e-scooters is an annoyance). However, if you want to hop on an e-scooter in the center of Brussels, you’ll soon need to scan your ID and maybe even take a selfie so the two photos can be compared. This is at least in part because the enterprising drug dealers of Brussels are using the scooters to get around, and definitely won’t think to buy their own scooter, or walk, drive or take the bus etc. If you survive the eurocrats and the e-scooters, the next challenge in the EU Quarter is to traverse the Schuman roundabout, which was once a major construction project but is now more like a permanent museum commemorating the Battle of the Somme. Right next to the giant hole where a roundabout should be is the HQ of the European External Action Service (don’t be fooled by the A word), which was this week raided as part of a fraud probe launched by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in what sociologists are calling EU-on-EU violence. Thankfully the raid took place in the morning, as Belgium has rules on the timing of such incursions. A decade ago, Belgian secret services located Europe’s most wanted man — Salah Abdeslam — in a Brussels flat two days after the Paris terror attacks, but weren’t allowed to raid the premises between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. CAPTION COMPETITION “The new Carpool Karaoke looks awful.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last week, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “Have you even said thank you once?” by Thomas Wilhelm

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. Happy Orgies in Brussels season to all who celebrate! It’s been five years (where does the time go?) since right-wing Hungarian MEP József Szájer was caught trying to flee a gay orgy during Covid lockdown. And it’s been a scarcely believable decade since soldiers and police in Brussels reportedly held an orgy while their colleagues hunted for terror suspects in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. A police spokesperson later said that no such orgy took place, but the officers were instead having drinks to honor a colleague who was leaving, which begs the question — how many drinks did they have? Rumors about the orgy were started by “certain female police officers, jealous for not having been invited to the evening,” Johan De Becker, then chief of the Brussels West policing zone, told the newspaper La Capitale. So remember the golden rule: Don’t mess with Belgian cops. Speaking of whom, the police have, in addition to their usual orgy-related activities, been trying out snazzy new uniforms. However, in what can only be described as Peak Belgium, a nationwide rollout of the uniforms has been delayed because they only have the word politie on them and not the word police. Plus, there have been complaints that the color scheme — a seemingly classic combo of dark blue and yellow — is too close to the black-and-yellow found on the Flemish flag (the Vlaamse Leeuw). That flag features what is purportedly a lion, but appears closer to a dragon that’s making an ill-fated attempt at juggling. Police in Italy, meanwhile, have been taking a break from patrolling cafés for cappuccino-after-lunch offenders and thwarted the crime of the century by apprehending a man from Lombardy who had allegedly been dressing up as his dead mother in order to claim her pension. Suspicion was raised when the man, complete with a wig and wearing makeup and jewellery, tried to renew his mom’s ID card. Local media reported that instead of registering her death, the man allegedly hid her body in his home — presumably so they could watch the movie “Psycho” together. Cops in France have of course been chasing the criminals behind the Louvre heist, and this week made four more arrests. The first batch of alleged thieves were charged with organized theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years in prison. If Nicolas Sarkozy can write a 216-page book about his 20 days in jail, imagine how long the prison memoirs of these guys will be? CAPTION COMPETITION “Wow, that’s the biggest turkey since my tariffs plan.” Can you do better? Email us at pdallison@politico.eu or get in touch on X @POLITICOEurope. Last week, we gave you this photo: Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best one from our mailbag — there’s no prize except the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far preferable to cash or booze. “Emmanuel Macron contemplates post-presidency career as professional 10-pin bowler.” by Susan Allen