All’s well...

The address took place in an Athens crushed by debt. What an unhappy concatenation of practical jokes with which to begin the year.
The first of these, though minor: the continuing survival of the rotational six-month presidency of the European Union, an atavistic remnant of a dysfunctional EU, in which every national capital had to have its 15 minutes of glory for the purposes of showing off its government.

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/01/15/inenglish/1389778910_969392.html