The real EU visionaries

10.01.2008 / 00:00 CET

Europe is made by its people – and by the vision and dedication they have: this is why I would like to read more articles like the interview with Michel Petite, (‘Changing times, changing priorities', 20 December-9 January 2008).
Commissioners come and go and some of them have their eyes on their country's political agenda most of the time. Especially since the Commission now mirrors the membership of the Union, with as many commissioners as there are member states, commissioners tend to act more as ambassadors of their countries in Brussels than as ‘European' commissioners.
The ones who really represent the European interest are the senior EU civil servants. They don't have any government to please (in general), most of them have been in Brussels for decades and are not victims of a certain national mindset.
Without the high-level civil servants, the EU will be a sort of OSCE where ministers put on the table their national positions and will play a strictly inter-governmental game.
One can only hope that the initial generation of European civil servants, who thought they had a mission to fulfil, in building Europe, is not going to be replaced with a more pragmatic, national-oriented group of bureaucrats deprived of political ideals.

Ernest Aubin
Brussels

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