May 2004

International attention focussed on the European Union earlier this month as it grew from 10 to 25 states*.  This was particularly timely for me since it bridged my personal transition from living in Brussels and my return to Canada. Indeed, it provided a much needed “fix” of EU news.

As a Canadian, the news I see about Europe is largely limited to Europe as it relates to North America, rather than in its own right. North Americans (Canadians are only slightly better at this than our southern neighbours) are notoriously caught up in their own world, not casting their personal news nets very far off the continental shores.

I was recently fortunate, however, to complete a four month voluntary co-op placement with the European Commission allowing me to see Europe up close.  I was well-prepared ahead of time on the institutional and legal structure of the European Union, through academic study, but nothing could really prepare me for the fascinating culture of the Commission. At this exciting time of enlargement, I am pleased to share my reflections. 

The Commission is one of the main institutions of the European Union, and the least political of the three.  It is the body that initiates legislation for consideration and adoption by the Council and the Parliament, and implements, or ensures Member States implement, the results.  Its staff are a conscious amalgam of officials from all the Member States, which in itself is a high cultural hurdle. In the legal unit in which I worked, eleven people represented eight Member States. It was a challenge to find a suitable meeting time given the cultural norms of lunch-time, much less negotiating approaches to legal content.  But negotiate this successfully they did; with mutual recognition of the value brought by the perspectives of the others, they truly embraced and appreciated the diversity.  Multiply this across the Commission and then add ten more countries, with, in recent history anyway, a much different political and economic backdrop, and EU enlargement becomes a daunting, yet extremely rich time. It really puts into perspective Canada’s French-English and interprovincial cleavages.

With recent corruption scandals, the Commission has developed a complex system of internal controls relating in particular to financial management.    The checking and double checking of all decisions at all levels has produced, as one might imagine, sluggish decision-making, but more troubling, a system where it is difficult to find anyone who feels responsible or accountable for the final result. Against the backdrop of some high-profile institutionalized vast expenditures, this lack of accountability produces some very surprising wastes of money when I compared it to my experience in Canadian local government with its cheese-paring approach to spending. 

For example, every three weeks the entire European Parliament moves by train from Brussels, Belgium, housing its administrative offices, to Strasbourg, France for a parliamentary sitting - a good example of waste.  Or the money spent on a beautiful new European Parliament building in Brussels to which access is restricted to MEPs and staff.  The citizens who elect those MEPs (albeit there are a shocking few who bother to vote) have access only to small parts of the building. On a more micro-level, imagine my surprise upon joining my unit as an unpaid volunteer, when the office administrator provided me with a completely new set of office supplies. What happened to the supplies of the person previously occupying my desk, I wondered. 

This liberal approach to spending applies also to staff salaries which contributes to a sense of separateness from ordinary citizens of the cities in which EU staff live. Those who initially had to be lured away from their home countries to work for the institutions are now paid disproportionately to those who live around them in Brussels and Luxembourg. Indeed, in Luxembourg, EU staff don’t even live near Luxembourgers, but rather, housing stock has been built, fully serviced, located next to the EU buildings on the Kirschberg Plateau separated from the city by a broad viaduct. And in Brussels, a grocery store, stocking products from all the Member States, is just one of a number of exclusive clubs for EU staff. This supports the publicly-held view of a group of well-paid, privileged people, who, while doing great work for a fascinating international body, seem to have lost touch with those for whom they are doing it.  Having a local government background, if I were a long-term Commission staffer, I would miss the immediacy of direct service delivery to those around me. But more than just for the sense of meaning to staff, a better connection with the communities in which they are located would give more positive profile to the Union itself, and help to battle against scandals from within and apathy from without. 

By far the most fun observations I made, though, related to language. A typical anglo-Canadian, I am almost painfully uni-lingual.  I embarked on my Brussels adventure with great feelings of inadequacy. Yes, ostensibly Canada is a bilingual country, but like many, I was taught French badly in the Ontario public school system and entered adulthood with a smattering of vocabulary (largely from the back of the cereal box) and only a vague notion of grammar - certainly neither an ear for understanding French nor the confidence to speak it.  

In four months, I can say my French has improved a bit but unexpectedly I learned a whole new language - Commission English!  While there are many more official EU languages, English, French, and German are its official working languages. In practice, this is really just limited to English and French; over time, the two have become somewhat intermingled, and many French words have been directly imported into English. This is fine when, like Comitology (the elaborate system of committee decision-making), the word has no pre-existing English meaning, but less helpful when the word implies another, or indeed a contrary, meaning in English.  For example, “delai” in French means deadline. Anglicized in its spelling, this becomes “delay” and is used interchangeably at the EU for “deadline.” An unfortunate choice of words for an organization accused of not meeting deadlines!

Although EU enlargement is partly motivated by a desire for European reunification, a stronger motivation is be an even greater economic and political world force. While, from my experience, the anti-US sentiment is currently strong in Europe, ironically there is an equally strong force in favour of being competitive with the US particularly in Research and Development. As I see it, this will require a shift to be more “American” - indeed, by adopting the very characteristics Europeans eschew.  As a Canadian, with our unique view across our southerly border, I can only say, “Don’t do it.” Keep the ability to embrace and work with the diversity within Europe, keep the sense of social responsibility as evidenced by the superior welfare net, keep the linguistic variation - do not adopt the American model of sameness to be competitive. Don’t beat them at their own game.

* The largest expansion of the European Union took place on 1 May 2004 when the following countries joined: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.  They joined: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.