Obama summit no-show not a snub: EU's Ashton

Hugo Brady, researcher at the London-based Centre for European Reform, recalls Obama's first taste of an EU-US summit in Prague last April when the Czechs were holding out on ratifying the EU's reforming Lisbon Treaty. "You can see when he is looking down the schedule of things to do this year how he would say: 'Well, I can go to Europe for another nice ding-dong over nothing, which I don't really understand, at which the Europeans seem to want me along almost as an umpire'." Brady and others see Obama's priorities lying more in Asia and back in domestic politics where his popularity is on the wane.