We step inside a closed-door customs committee meeting in Brussels, following Louise and her colleagues his chapter offers a rare, immersive account of a customs committee working group, where twenty-seven member states, interpreters and Commission officials grapple with the minutiae of classifying consumer goods – from vacuum cleaner parts to decorative balloons – amidst a whirlwind of digital tools, linguistic compromises and political maneuvering.

Through vivid ethnographic detail, we reveal how EU law is crafted. Here, the classical diplomat – negotiator, mediator, generalist – confronts the realities of digital mediation. Through Louise’s eyes, and in rare ethnographic detail, we witness the labour of multilingual lawmaking: interpreters juggling languages and distractions, delegates scrolling for images to clarify a product’s classification and the relentless clicking of keyboards as twenty-seven member states haggle over every word, comma and image in a three-column Word document.

This chapter reveals how digital technologies, while promising efficiency and speed, also fragment attention and introduce new layers of complexity. The negotiation room becomes a microcosm of the EU’s ‘Brussels effect’ – its power to set global standards – where the mundane (classifying vacuum cleaner parts or decorative balloons) intersects with the monumental (shaping trade, safety, and environmental rules for 500 million citizens). As interpreters and diplomats alike rely on digital tools to bridge linguistic and political divides, the chapter asks: How is the craft of diplomacy transformed when screens and algorithms mediate human judgement? And what does this mean for the future of EU governance, as AI begins to reshape the invisible labor that keeps the Union running?

The chapter ‘Digital Diplomats’ examines how smartphones have become indispensable to the everyday workings of Brussels’ political and diplomatic life. Drawing on ethnographic vignettes – from a diplomat’s panic at forgetting her phone to a trilogue meeting where multiple devices shape negotiations – the chapter argues that smartphones are not merely tools, but integral to the EU’s everyday governance. These devices function as shapeshifters: they are information portals, negotiation aids, social outlets and even diplomatic prostheses, extending the reach and capabilities of their users.

Inspired by the scholarship of Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, the chapter frames smartphones as central to the ‘diplomatic assemblage’ – a dynamic interplay of people, practices and technologies. The phone’s omnipresence transforms how work is done, from protocol staff using step-counters to assure delegates, to diplomats managing multiple conversations simultaneously. Yet, this dependency also introduces new vulnerabilities, as seen in rising cybersecurity threats and the institutional push to regulate device use.

Ultimately, the chapter reveals how digital technologies are redefining diplomatic bodies and practices, making the EU’s political life increasingly hybrid. To understand contemporary governance, we must recognise the smartphone not just as a tool, but as a constitutive element of the Brussels Bubble’s social and political fabric.

In this chapter explore language usage and interaction in general and discuss the overlap of sociolinguistics with the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis. We will investigate the conventional patterns used by speakers when they construct, participate in and evaluate discourse at large. The concept of face is an important one here, namely the self-image of speakers that they wish to maintain and protect via the sociolinguistic resources available to them: speech events in the form of narratives, telephone conversations, weblogs, university lectures, etc. Context effects on sociolinguistic interaction are discussed with examples of turn-taking, power, solidarity and cross-cultural communication, and also with a focus on social hierarchies and language practices in the workplace. We conclude with a discussion of crossing and translanguaging in multilingual contexts.