The Belgian National BeachVolleyball Championships were held in Brussels' city centre at the weekend. Estimates of how much sand had to be shipped into the pseudo-medieval Grand Place - in order for skimpily-clad athletes to disport themselves - ranged from 120 tonnes to 800 tonnes.

Even this nonsense was not enough to lure the European Union institutions back to town.

The EU remains semi-comatose. The bureaucrats are still lying on a beach somewhere in southern Europe, apparently unaware that the beach has moved to Brussels.

It is instructive, though, to look at those aspects of EU life that carry on regardless, oblivious to the summer recess.

The most obvious and persistent is the European Commission's role as EU competition authority. The EU has sole responsibility for ruling on whether EU mergers over a certain size are compatible with antitrust law, fair competition and the single market.

Sadly for the overworked merger task-force staff, EU law imposes strict time limits within which rulings have to be made. Unlike many other areas of European Commission competence, decisions cannot be put off until the relevant officials return from holiday.

So, for example, the purchase by Interbrew of Bass's British brewing interests in July automatically set a deadline for the Commission. The Commission had to decide by yesterday whether to clear the purchase, whether to launch a full-scale investigation into the deal, or whether to accede to Britain's request that the matter be referred to its own competition authorities.

Perennial pestilences are another area of EU life that will not take a holiday. They follow a less predictable course than the merger taskforce's timetable, but still have scant respect for the holiday season. The outbreak of classical swine fever in the UK was only the most visible of the epidemics.

In July there was a smaller outbreak of the same disease in Germany. And there was foot-and-mouth disease in Greece. So there has been enough to keep the European Commission's Food and Veterinary Office in Blackrock busy. And once again Mr David Byrne, the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Safety, was being called upon to explain to the British that they shouldn't take things so personally.

Eurostat, the European Commission's statistical arm, follows the pattern of the merger taskforce. Every month, it must publish those morsels of statistical data that are grist to the foreign exchange dealers' mill.

Last Friday's euro-zone inflation figures will not have put any central bankers in a holiday mood: in July, euro-zone annual inflation was once again at 2.4 per cent, well above the European Central Bank's ceiling of "less than 2 per cent".

ECB president Mr Wim Duisenberg had already conceded that inflation might "blip" above the 2 per cent mark for a few months, but it doesn't do to use up all your blips too early.

The rise in the oil price, which has undermined inflation targets, probably falls into the same category as classical swine fever - it is an unwanted development which the European Commission is powerless to prevent. So, apparently, is the downward slide of the euro.

The EU's impotence is ever more marvellous to behold. Despite bold promises by French Finance Minister Mr Laurent Fabius when France took over the presidency of the EU Council of Ministers and of the EMU, the euro continues to slide. Even strong hints of an impending rise of up to half a percentage point in rates have done little to support the currency.

When the European Commission staff return en masse, at the start of September, refreshed and reinvigorated, they will have some work to do to revise the Commission's economic forecasts, built as they were on mistaken assumptions of a stronger euro and of a lower oil price.

The danger that confronts the Commission and the ECB is that a persistently weak euro will not improve the chances of a vote in September's referendum in Denmark in favour of joining the euro. And a no-vote would weaken the euro still further.

If the euro's slide continues, an informal meeting of EU finance ministers at Versailles on September 9th and 10th acquires particular importance. Versailles might be the place to turn the tide - then again it might just be another venue for beach-volleyball.