But for me the most intriguing character at the event is someone else.
He is a fellow journalist - at least that's what his yellow accreditation badge suggests. I haven't got close enough to see his name and even if I had, I wouldn't read it. It might spoil the mystery.
Someone told me he was Finnish. He does look Finnish, with pale skin and that curious schoolboyish mop of hair many Finns have. Someone else told me he was Hungarian. I'm glad I'm not sure. Knowing his nationality might spoil the mystery, too.
Press rooms are fairly noisy places where not much moves. Journalists sit at desks and talk on telephones, or into microphones, or to each other while they hammer away at keyboards.
The ECOFIN press room is typical in this respect, even now as I write, at the end of the event with the journalists all comparing their travel plans for the great return to Brussels. But for the last two days there has been one exception, this pale, thin man who looks both old and young.
Instead of sitting he has been constantly on the move. Instead of talking he has been completely silent. I haven't heard him say a single word to anyone else.
His main activity has been taking photographs, but he is not a photographer. Every few seconds he takes a picture using a small pocket camera. He takes photographs of everything: the benches on which we work, the food in the press buffet, the reporters standing in line for food at the press buffet, logos, plugs, wires, keyboards, walls, doors, boxes.
He also takes photographs of himself. Lots of them. These are no ordinary arm's-length 'selfies'. He sets a ten-second delay on the shutter of his camera, props it up somewhere and then simply stands, watching the blinking red light while he waits for it to go click. He does not pose, he does not smile, he does not pull a silly face or point at anything of interest. He just stands there.
This morning, in the main press conference, he set his camera counting down on the stage at the front of the hall and sat down among a long line of other journalists who were waiting for the press conference to start. He did not know them or speak to them. The camera took its picture. He rose from his seat, collected his camera and moved on, to the bemusement of those he had sat amongst.
The one piece of human interaction I have seen him engage in was with a Japanese photographer. Using sign language, he handed his little camera over and the Japanese photographer took his picture. The strange man nodded, collected his camera and moved on.
He takes pictures of himself in every room. In every corner of every room. Facing in different directions in the same room.
This may all seem rather trivial. On one level it is. But especially in the midst of the supposed great importance and political posturing of ECOFIN I find it intriguing and in a way, delightful.
Perhaps this strange man simply has a compulsive nature and gains some sort of pleasure or satisfaction from taking these pictures. It is hard to imagine he ever looks at them again after a quick glance to make sure he was in the frame immediately after the image was taken.
Perhaps it is part of a grand conceptual art project and he will produce a vast volume of these grainy pictures in a specially-commissioned EU artwork. I doubt it.
My impression is that he has no interest in ECOFIN, but for some unknown reason he has to be here. These pictures prove that he was here, not for the benefit of a suspicious editor, but actually in order to prove that he exists in this time at this place. As long as he continues taking these photos, he can be certain he is still here. He is reporting on his own existence.
But this is just my guess. As I write - I swear this is true - he approaches my desk. He pulls out his camera and without looking at me or at anyone or anything in particular he takes a photograph in my general direction. He checks the viewfinder. His expression remains utterly blank, there is no sign of satisfaction or displeasure at the photograph of me he has taken. He puts the camera in his pocket and walks on.
Yes, he knows something.
