Many locations around the world have become synonymous with international treaties and conferences, some famous and others notorious. Here is just a sample.

The Lisbon Treaty (2009)
The Portugal capital hasn’t been so famous since its 1974 revolution. It may be ungallant to say so, but Portugal doesn’t carry much weight these days on the international stage.

The recent election in Portugal (you see, you didn’t know there was one, did you?) carried even less coverage than Bulgaria’s in the international media. Its prime minister is a gentleman named Jose Socrates, but, chances are, the only Portuguese politician you may have heard of is Mario Soares, a cuddly bear of a man with fat cheeks.

Portugal was last important on the global stage back in the mid-1970s when it looked like it could be turning communist, triggering panic in London and Washington and frenzied activity among MI5 and CIA agents aghast at the prospect of a Soviet-style satellite in western Europe.

Once it became clear that Portugal would embrace the eminently safer (and duller) route of oscillating between virtually indistinguishable centre-left and centre-right governments, the press reverted to covering only the essential about Portugal: football and tourism.   

The Lisbon Treaty itself is now synonymous with an erosion of national sovereignty that no doubt will trigger bouts of feverish nationalism among ordinary citizens. It also elevated Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus to hero’s status in the minds of eurosceptics. And how Klaus relished his time in the sun! Pictures of him looking stern and clenching his jaw and grimacing through his glasses suddenly appeared all over the media. For a short time he was one of Europe’s most famous politicians as other leaders waited on tenterhooks for him to sign on the dotted line. Now that he has signed, of course, Klaus will return to the anonymity from whence he came.

Treaty of Rome (1957)
The Treaty of Rome refers to the treaty which established the European Economic Community (EEC) and was signed by France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg on March 25 1957.

Hang on a second! Back then what was envisaged was just a loose confederation of European states, a kind of mutual co-operation pact. No mention of federalism or a European super state or a European president or faceless politicians pulling strings in Strasbourg and Brussels enjoying long liquid lunches. How did all this happen? Fundamentally, a group of bureaucrats stalked the corridors of power and met in secret to decide how to enhance their power further.

Those attracted to European federalism are generally remarkably uncharismatic politician of centrist views (so Portugal’s former prime minister Durao Barroso was an ideal president) and little ideological drive. They don’t trust the people, believing that their own judgement is far superior.

Curiously, in the UK at least, proponents of Europe federalism usually can’t pronounce their "r’s" and usually talk about "yerp" rather than "Europe", Roy Jenkins and Michael Heseltine being the most prominent examples.

The Maastricht Treaty (1992)
This led to the creation of the euro currency, and created what is commonly referred to as the pillar structure of the European Union.

A complex European treaty, Maastricht almost brought John Major’s conservative government in the UK to a premature end as ‘revolting’ conservative MP’s voted against his government and sought to maximise their influence at a time when the government had a slender majority.

Eurosceptics – most prominently backbench Conservative MPs like Bill Cash and Teresa Gorman (remember her?) – actually thought of themselves as rather important for a
while. Talk about delusions of grandeur. They even put up a candidate against Major’s leadership in 1995 when he launched a contest. Their candidate was a Vulcan from Star Trek named John Redwood. He lost. Major himself became a ludicrous figure as he tried to straddle both sides, referring to eurosceptic cabinet ministers who opposed his policy as "bastards" while at the same time pretending to be the "biggest eurosceptic in the cabinet". Needless to say, it was a balancing act doomed to fail.

The Kyoto Protocol (1997)
The US, although a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, infamously neither ratified nor withdrew from this Protocol designed to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and stave off global warming. Indeed, as of 2005, the United States was the largest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

President Bush opposed the treaty because of the strain he believed the treaty would put on the economy. His recalcitrance was a defining moment for prophets of doom about global warming and legions of liberal intellectual Bush-bashers.

His refusal to implement the accords confirmed our belief that Bush was a spoiled Texas gun-totin’ gunfighter who cared not one iota for the state of the planet as long as he and his buddies were drenched in oil. Bush became the epitome of evil to the left, an imperialist global terrorist tied to the military industrial complex and locked into advice from Rasputin-like neoconservatives. Liberals everywhere were ecstatic. They had a whipping boy who made Ronald Reagan look like a moderate.

The Munich Agreement (1938)
No, not Hitler’s 1923 Putsch, but an agreement permitting German annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland just one year before the outbreak of World War 2. The Sudetenland were areas along borders of Czechoslovakia, mainly inhabited by Czech Germans.

The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich among the major powers of Europe without the presence of Czechoslovakia. Widely seen as an act of appeasement, it was signed by Germany, France, Britain, and Italy.  

Just the mere mention of this agreement – among Brits at least – brings to mind a doddering old fool with a funny moustache and a quivering, plummy voice waving a piece of paper. Neville Chamberlain became the byword for appeasement and grovelling cowardice. Of course, it’s all with hindsight and, as Winston Churchill said, no doubt the much maligned fellow had honourable intentions.

Hitler apparently dined out on his imitations of Chamberlain for a long time afterwards, reducing his entourage to sycophantic laughter. Poor Neville, he never stood a chance and, worse still, anyone who ever opposes any confrontation with a vicious power is forever tarred with the same brush and branded a pusillanimous weakling.

The World Economic Forum
Get out your pictures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, unfurl that red banner and prepare to kick capitalist arse! And if you are in the process of so doing, then you are probably a sexually frustrated boozed-up undergraduate for whom any form of authority is like a red rag to a bull. We have all been there.

The annual venue for the meeting of the World Economic Forum is now part of the calendar, an orgy of hate and rebellion, masquerading as a genuine demonstration, an opportunity to thump anybody wearing a uniform or tie – or anyone with more than a few coins in their pocket – and get a free dousing from police in return.

After all, all students know that the people who meet at Davos are capitalist exploiters, parasites and greed-obsessed manipulators of the masses, worshipping at the altar of mammon while a third of the world goes hungry. Institutions over which they preside – notably the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – are just further tools of this domination.

The fact that within 10 years these self-same demonstrators will join the legions tied to the capitalist system and endure the indignities of the 7.39 Croydon to Waterloo service is neither here nor there. Enjoy your time of rebellion while you can. Don’t forget to smash the windows of McDonald’s. Also don’t forget to steak a few Big Macs while you’re at it.

Once you return home you can visit McDonald’s safely under cover of darkness and, preferably, concealed by a hood.

The Guadeloupe Summit (1979)
Forgotten this one? Not me. Ostensibly a summit to discuss political and security developments of international concern, it was another nail in the coffin of the Labour government of the time.

Former British prime minister "Sunny" Jim Callaghan returned from this summit (with US president Jimmy Carter, French president Giscard d’Estaing and German chancellor Helmut Schmidt) in early January, looking extremely fit and bronzed. The rest of us in the UK were enduring an interminable winter of strikes and industrial unrest as well as the (perennial) "wrong kind of snow" that reduced the daily commute to paralysis.

Callaghan returned to say that he didn’t think the rest of the world viewed the situation in the UK as a mounting crisis. Needless to say, the papers paraphrased his words with "Crisis, what crisis?". He never actually said that, but, never mind, never let the truth stand in the way of a little propaganda. The Labour government fell shortly afterwards. Hardest to swallow was that a generation of supposedly brilliant politicians – Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Jim Callaghan, Roy Jenkins and their ilk – were unable to defeat a woman!