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But for many, especially in countries like Britain, Delors became the reviled personification of the overreaching Eurocrat bent on meddling in virtually all aspects of people’s lives.

From Brussels, where his father had served as a Member of the European Parliament and a top Eurocrat at the European Commission, Johnson filed report after belligerent report bursting with lies and myths about alleged EU regulations and scandals, eagerly repeated by the Eurosceptic elites and masses.

Among Brexiters, Von der Leyen has been characterised as a cartoon Eurocrat intent on building “a centralised, undemocratic, updated form of communism”, as the Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, said in the parliament.

He was lampooned in the run-up to the May vote by political opponents as Eurocrat "Hans Brusselmans"; but the negative message failed and the multi-lingual Labour leader took advantage of his election campaign to push for the Commission presidency.

Eleven years since opening his restaurant in the shadow of the European commission’s vast Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels, Philippe Weiner can safely boast that the Meet Meat Steak and Wine House is a firm favourite of the better-fed Eurocrat.