From Governor’s Beach, Damascus and Jerusalem are closer than Athens. Yet the (Greek-Cypriot) republic, with a population of only 850,000, will be running the EU’s ministerial business for six months. Brussels frets over the prospect. Many think Cyprus should not have been let in before striking a deal to reunite the Turkish-Cypriot north with the internationally recognised south. The EU’s relations with NATO are paralysed by the dispute. Those with Turkey were testy even before Cyprus took the chair: now they will be partly frozen.

There is another reason to worry. As the German tabloid Bild put it pithily: “A bankrupt island takes over power in Europe.” Can a Communist president, Demetris Christofias, handle both bail-out negotiations and the acutely difficult process of euro-zone integration imposed by the crisis? Can a debtor deal impartially with creditors’ demands for stronger centralised controls? Luckily, perhaps, the rotating presidency has lost much of its importance since the 2009 Lisbon treaty. Summits and foreign ministers’ meetings have their own permanent presidents, as do meetings of euro-zone finance ministers.  MORE