Extraordinarily high expenses for meetings of international leaders do not turn politicians into good role models, and they are hard to justify when the general public is asked to tighten belts. There are few press reports about the big summits of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century-such as big UN global conferences, APEC, G8 and big EU meetings- that do not question the multimillion dollar bills for summit extravaganzas.