For anyone that cares:
“Indeed, the plan for after the meeting had been for the two premiers to make statements outside the front of the ministry, just yards from the iron gates behind which the vocal demonstrators were gathered. But Downing Street asked for the press conference to be moved inside so that it would not be disrupted – a request that was rejected by the Luxembourgish hosts, who insisted that it take place as planned in the grounds, where two podiums and national flags had been set up for the purpose. This prompted the Downing Street team, not unreasonably, to pull Johnson out of participating in the press conference.
Other British journalists covering the event agreed that Johnson could not have taken part in the press conference as proposed by Bettel. The BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg observed that “it would have been total pandemonium if it had gone ahead – protesters were shouting and chanting as loudly as they could within metres of the podiums”, while her colleague Adam Fleming wrote that “as soon as we arrived at the office of the prime minister of Luxembourg it became obvious a planned outdoor news conference could not go ahead.”
As it was, Bettel then opted to press ahead and appear on his own, next to an empty podium, railing against the “nightmare” of Brexit and insisting that the EU would not be to blame if the two sides were unable to reach agreement on a new Brexit deal.”
And that for me says a lot about the EU.