Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Welcome to a new occasional section of this column — Inappropriate Theme Park Ride of the Week! The inaugural winner is Graveley Fruit Farm in Hertfordshire, England, which has just come under fire for its Titanic-themed children’s slide.

On the one hand, some 1,500 people perished when the Titanic sank into the icy waters, so the choice might be deemed somewhat inappropriate. On the other hand, what better way to prepare our children for the difficulties of life than by sitting them on a taffeta mat and sending them down a polyethylene slide decorated to look like the ship in the most famous disaster of all time? At least the slide isn’t as bad as the movie, which is so bad I was rooting for the iceberg (too soon?).

Anyway, there are also links between theme parks and politics — and not just because spending too long doing either can make you vomit.

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron sought Saudi investment to turn what was once the country’s biggest theme park into a manga-themed attraction. The site used to be home to Mirapolis, which celebrated French literature and culture (“c’mon kids, let’s go ride a rollercoaster based on Proust’s ‘À la recherche du temps perdu.’ The queues are short, but the ride lasts 200 hours”) but closed down in 1991 due to financial difficulties.

Then there’s the Puy du Fou theme park, which has one location in France and one in Spain, and now wants to open another in the U.K. Philippe de Villiers, its founder and president, has been linked with Russian President Vladimir Putin and previously proposed the construction of a theme park in Crimea after Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in 2014.

Next comes Thierry Breton, the former European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Getting Into Fights With Elon Musk, who helped come up with the idea for a high-tech theme park called “Futuroscope,” just north of Poitiers in western France. Its tagline is: “Expect the unexpected,” which was very much the theme of Breton’s time in Brussels.

Theme parks aren’t just occasionally political though; they can also be weird.

There’s Wunderland Kalkar in Germany, which is on the site of a former nuclear power plant — one that was never operational, as the entire project was abandoned due to safety concerns. There’s South Korea’s Loveland, an adult-only sculpture park that features explicit artwork (maybe President Donald Trump found out about it just before cooling diplomatic ties with Seoul). And then there’s Colombia’s Parques Temáticos Hacienda Nápoles, a theme park on the grounds of former drug baron Pablo Escobar’s ranch (sounds like a wild ride).

POLITICO is currently waiting for planning approval for an EU-style theme park to be built on the site of the Schuman roundabout called EUland. It will feature rides such as Qualified Majority, which only starts spinning when 15 people agree to take part; Trilogue, where three bumper cars go into a dark tunnel and never come out; and the Strasbourg Express, where hundreds of people make a very slow journey once a month for no reason whatsoever.

That last ride was inspired by a train carrying hundreds of European Parliament members and officials, which accidentally ended up in Disneyland Paris when on the way to Strasbourg in 2023. Rumors that the name of the vehicle in question was called “the Gravy Train” were strenuously denied by all involved.

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“Russia’s military recruitment struggles continue as Putin’s body doubles forced to sign up.”

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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.

“She’ll need more than a fan to blow away the stench of corruption.”

by Mark Hayden

Paul Dallison writes Declassified, a weekly satirical column.

It’s official: Members of the European Parliament are not the most dangerous creatures in Europe!

French MEP Manon Aubry wrote on social media on Monday that she was in hospital after being bitten by a viper. Aubry didn’t say where the snake attack took place, but she was smiling in her post, despite what she said were “complications related to the poisoning.”

The leftist MEP is far from the only politician to have been attacked by an animal, however. Here are a few more (no animals were harmed in the writing of this article):

Snakebitten

The chances of being bitten by a snake in Europe are slim — there are “fewer than 300 such cases in France each year,” according to Aubry — but it’s more common when you venture further afield.

Last year, Inna Gardiner, a politician from Jersey — the largest of the Channel Islands — was bitten by a Malayan Pit Viper during a holiday in Thailand. And West Virginia politician Doug Skaff was bitten twice by venomous snakes in 2024 while removing campaign signs (and he hadn’t even won the election he was competing in).

In a rare case of “man attacks snake,” U.S. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. was filmed earlier this year picking up a pair of snakes in the home of Mehmet Oz, a former TV doctor who now heads up the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “Cheryl cheerleads the removal of a pair of Black Racers from Dr Oz’s patio,” Kennedy captioned a social media post of the incident, referencing his wife, actress Cheryl Hines. A woman in the footage can be heard speaking for all of us by simply saying: “Why?”

This is the same RFK Jr. who cut the head off a dead whale and strapped it to the roof of the family minivan; who dumped a dead bear cub carcass in Central Park; and who cut off the penis of a road-killed raccoon.

Something to sink your teeth into

During a visit to Chişinău in 2023, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen was bitten by a rescue dog belonging to Moldovan President Maia Sandu. Sandu had brought her dog, named Codruț, to a photo op with Van der Bellen and Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar. Van der Bellen reached down to pet Codruț, but the dog lunged at him and snapped at his right hand. Sandu apologized and explained Codruț had become overwhelmed (presumably as it’s such a big fan of Austrian politics).

Sandro Garibaldi, a member of the regional council in Liguria for the League, was bitten on the hand by a wolf earlier this year. Garibaldi had interrupted the wolf in the process of killing some sheep. It’s not clear if the wolf in question was the same one that killed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s pet pony, Dolly.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel wasn’t bitten by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dog when she visited his home in Sochi back in 2007; she was just scared by it. However, she was pecked by an Australian rainbow lorikeet during a visit to a bird park in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2021, causing her to scream in a similar fashion to when she used to see Silvio Berlusconi at European Council summits.

Back in Covid times, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro — who had dismissed the seriousness of the epidemic and criticized containment measures ordered by local governors, but also tested positive for the disease — was taking a walk while under quarantine at the presidential palace when he was bitten on the hand by a rhea. “This rhea represents us,” posted Margarida Salomão of the Workers’ Party.

In 2009, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was bitten on the hand by a groundhog. Rumors that Bloomberg is being bitten on the hand continuously were unconfirmed at the time of going to press.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was attacked by an ostrich at a safari park in Texas last year. Johnson’s wife, Carrie, posted a clip of the incident on Instagram in which he can be heard saying: “Cripes! Oh, fucking hell.”

On a more serious note, Greece’s King Alexander died after a monkey attacked him back in 1920. The king was walking in the grounds of a castle outside Athens when a Barbary macaque attacked his dog. Another monkey then bit the king, and the wounds soon became infected and turned septic. Three weeks later, he died aged 27.

In the White Ouch

It’s almost mandatory to be attacked by an animal if you are the president of the United States. In 1979, Jimmy Carter was out fishing when he came across a swamp rabbit. The story went that the rabbit was “berserk,” “enraged,” “making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth.” Then-Press Secretary Jody Powell said it was “intent upon climbing into the presidential boat.”

Every year at Thanksgiving, the president pardons a turkey, and in 2001, the turkey thanked George W. Bush by lunging toward his crotch — attacking him below the 49th parallel, if you will.

In 2015, when still a presidential candidate, Donald Trump was photographed by Time magazine with a bald eagle called Uncle Sam, which clearly did not care for the billionaire and tried to bite him. Trump has yet to start a war with eagles.

Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, was not attacked by an animal, as far as we know. But he did have a parrot called Poll that was rather foulmouthed and was removed from Jackson’s funeral service for spouting profanities at the mourners.

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

For those of you not in Brussels, the EU capital is deserted at this time of year. It’s emptier than U.S. President Donald Trump’s loyalty card for the salad bar. It’s quieter than a Zoom call with only Boomers (because none of them could find the unmute button, geddit?). It’s lonelier than Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at the next European Council.

This is because the EU point-blank refuses to give up on its summer vacation. There’s no crisis too big that it can’t be postponed a few weeks while everyone goes off to Tuscany, whether it’s Russia invading Georgia (2008), a devastating earthquake in Italy (2016), or the arrival of tens of thousands of unauthorized migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta (a few days ago).

Older readers may remember when in 2017 — back when the EU was entirely in black and white — then-European Parliament President Antonio Tajani wrote to Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to point out that the Parliament was taking its summer break, and that no work should be sent over before early September. Tajani’s note was dated July 13.

A note from our Irony Department: This column is off next week as I’m on vacation. Although, as Tuscany is out of my price range, I’ll be vacationing at the Schuman roundabout instead.

But if major events happening while you’re on a beach or halfway up an Alp is a bad look, the alternative — working all through the summer just in case something happens — isn’t much better.

In the hot summer of 2009, when Tajani — yes, him again — was merely the European transport commissioner, he drew the short straw of running the good ship Berlaymont while the other commissioners took a break. He then used the time to remind Europeans not to lose their luggage, describing the “phenomenon” of lost luggage as “very important” and “extremely worrying.” Tajani, of course, was a close ally of the late Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, who had an awful lot of baggage (maybe even 10,000 suitcases full a day).

The summer before Tajani’s plea to keep a closer eye on your suitcases, the EU had launched a bloc-wide labeling scheme for sunscreen. Günter Verheugen, the commissioner for industry at the time, called the scheme an example of “responsible business behavior.” And Verheugen had perhaps more of a need for sunscreen than most, as in 2006, photographs had emerged of him relaxing on a nudist beach in Lithuania wearing nothing but a baseball cap — oh, and he was with his chief of staff.

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“This is Jordan, he’s my biggest fan.”

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.

“Volodymyr, when I sack a minister, they stay sacked.”

by Tom Morgan