Brussels #2

Adventures Of A Civil Servant (Part 7):

I expressed an interest in going back to Brussels, and, very quickly, it was arranged for me to go and work in the European Commission.

The European Commission Building – Le Berlaymont – before refurbishment

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. What had actually happened was that Keith Masson, my successor’s successor in UKREP, had had a conversation with Herman van Zonneveld, who was head of the Employment Law Division in the Commission. Herman had said that he was short of staff and he would be interested in having a National Expert. Keith had reported this back to London and they had interpreted it as a definite offer. Be that as it may, one rainy October day, I arrived in Brussels, for the first time for about six years. I immediately succumbed again to its charm. I had a good discussion with Herman van Zonneveld, and, after a few more hiccups, I started work on the 21st January 1991.

Before I left London, I was summoned to see Michael Forsyth, who was a Eurosceptic junior minister in the Department of Employment. He asked me whether he should measure in days or hours the length of time it would take me to “go native”. He added that it had taken Leon Brittan – a former Conservative cabinet minister, who was now a Vice-President of the Commission – about a week to go native. Michael Howard also sent me a note via his Private Secretary, wishing me well, thanking me for all the work I had done and saying that I would be “sorely missed”.

The transition was not nearly as straightforward as it had been the first time round, though we had the advantage of knowing about banks, the best areas to live and the transport system – though the metro system had expanded considerably since we last lived there. Around New Year we went to spend a week staying with our friends Syd and Wendy Allman in order to open bank accounts and find somewhere to live. We hadn’t factored in the New Year Public Holiday, so, effectively, we had two full days to look for accommodation. We looked at 17 or 18 houses in that time, with three different agencies. It was dark when we saw the last two or three houses on the Thursday. We were driven back to the agency in Watermael-Boitsfort and the agent put us under pressure to sign up for one of the properties. We were tired and, in any case, I was not going to sign up without sleeping on it. Eventually we were released from her “prison”, with the promise that we would go back and look at the property we thought we liked the best in the morning. We were still in bed at 9:00 the following morning, when the agency rang to say that the landlord had agreed to reduce the rent by 3000 Belgian francs (about £50) a month. We made an appointment to meet the agency and decided to take the property. We made a good choice: of all the houses that I have lived in that one was the one that I liked best.

Before we moved in we were advised to have an expert report undertaken about the state of the property, so that we would be able to show, when we left, what was already wrong with the property before we moved in. Syd and Wendy’s son, Max, joined me to show the expert round. Max pointed out that there was no pole to open the trapdoor to the loft. The expert turned on him and said: Il n’y a pas d’éléphants non plus! There aren’t any elephants either – “I say what is there, not what isn’t there”.

Before we went to look at property we had gone to the BBL (Banque Bruxelles Lambert) to open two accounts. The first was a joint account and the second was in Jennifer’s name. Other married women said they had had problems opening a bank account, but on this occasion, it went ahead without any problem. It was important for a married woman to have her own account, because, if the husband were to die, the joint account would be immediately frozen. The women used to say to each other: “If your husband dies, go to the bank and draw all the money out, before you register the death!”

We also had to re-import the car, which we had bought in Belgium ten years earlier. We had to get Belgian identity cards and register with a social security mutuelle for health care and open accounts with the electricity and fuel companies. We received some help with all this from the Commission, but last time round, most of this had been done by the Representation.

I stayed with Syd and Wendy for the first few weeks, before Jennifer came out in mid-February. I went back to England for a few days. It was minus 14 in Brussels and there were heavy snowfalls in London. It took me an age to get from Heathrow to Watford. There was still a lot of snow on the ground, when we left Watford, a few days later to get the overnight ferry from Felixstowe, so we left early in order to get there in the daylight.

All our goods and chattels had been loaded into a furniture van by a local Watford removal company a few days earlier. Included was a large heavy chest of drawers, which had been kept in one of the upstairs bedrooms. The removal people had taken all the drawers out and carried them and the shell downstairs separately and loaded them on to the removal lorry, where they put the drawers and their contents back into the shell for the journey. There was still snow on the ground when our belongings arrived at our new house in Brussels in a ‘Pickfords’ lorry.

The new house was on three floors. The entrance was on the ground floor, where there was also a garage, a bedroom and a number of smaller rooms and cupboards. On the first floor there was only a very large ‘J’ shaped living room and a smallish kitchen. There were three more bedrooms, a bathroom and toilet on the second floor. There was a beautiful wooden winding staircase linking the three floors. We had decided that we wanted the chest of drawers in the small bedroom on the second floor. So the two muscular Flemish removal men decided to lift the chest of drawers out of the lorry and carry it up two flights of stairs. Three-quarters of the way up, they stopped to complain that it was heavy! They hadn’t thought to take the drawers out!

With the Commission’s help, I managed to get Belgian number plates for the car without any problem. I expected to get a letter from the Belgian authorities requiring me to take the car to the Contrôle Technique (the equivalent of the MOT in the UK) but I didn’t receive one. I came to realise that it was illegal to drive a car that did not have a valid certificate. It was July or August before I tried to do anything about it. I had found a garage round the corner and the owner had said he would take the car for me. However, he came back to me and said there were major problems and I would have to go myself. The least of these problems was that part of the bodywork was rusty and, along with other similar problems, that would need attention before they could issue a certificate.

The first major problem was that I needed to produce the previous certificate. When I said that I didn’t have one, they said that it was impossible to register a car without a certificate. It took some time to persuade them that I had in fact managed to register the car without going to the Contrôle Technique. The really difficult problem was that the chassis number on all the paper work was different from the one stamped on the engine of the car. This had not been a problem in England, because, when we imported it into England, the number had been copied from the engine. However, as I had bought the car in Belgium, I still had the original document with a different number on it. The garage where I bought the car had since moved to Waterloo. I had to go back there to get the paperwork changed, or so I thought.

It was a French car and by this time it was August and most of the French were on holiday. However, they were eventually able to check the paperwork, only to find that the correct number was on the paperwork and it was the number on the chassis that was wrong! It is a criminal offence to alter the chassis number on a car without judicial authority. Eventually, I had to take the car back to the Peugeot garage for them to delete the old number and stamp in a new one – and to give me a paper to say that it had been done in bonne et due forme. I then had to go back to the Contrôle Technique for the third or fourth time – each time it took ages to get into the place without the proper papers – and they eventually gave me a certificate. In all the fuss, they forgot about the problems with the bodywork etc.!

As a National Expert I had no status in the Commission and so I expected to have a fairly easy time. That was the case initially, but things changed gradually, until, at the end I was working as many hours as I had been in London. Herman’s unit was responsible for making most of the proposals under the Commission’s Social Action Programme, which had been drawn up under the direction of Jacques Delors, who had been President of the Commission since 1985. The programme included proposals for directives on working time, part time work, temporary work, works councils, young workers and detached workers. It also promised a Commission Opinion on an Equitable Wage. To my surprise, Herman asked me if I would take on the Working Time Directive. This had already been drafted by Klaus Käding, who had since left the unit. The proposal had met with strong opposition from the British Government, in the person of Michael Howard. Herman also had joint responsibility, with John Morley’s unit, for the Commission Opinion on an Equitable Wage. I was given that as well.

By the time I arrived, the proposal for a Working Time Directive had almost completed its first reading in the European Parliament and in the Economic and Social Committee. One of my first tasks was to draft the Commission’s response to the Parliament’s Opinion and to draft a revised proposal taking into account those of the Parliament’s amendments which the Commission wished to accept. Treaty changes, made since I was in Brussels before, meant that the Parliament had a much more important role in the preparation of legislation than it had previously. Directives were now the joint responsibility of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. So, the Commission’s revised proposal went to the Social Questions Group for the Council to adopt, not a Directive, as it would have done eight years before, but a Common Position, which would then be sent for debate in Parliament. I accompanied Herman to the meetings of the Social Questions Group, but, unlike ten years before when I had been President of the Group, I was not allowed to speak. I was, however, fully involved in the Commission’s negotiating position – not that there was that much room for manoeuvre.

In truth, the Commission’s original proposal was a pretty tame affair. Crucially, it said nothing about limiting the number of hours that could be worked weekly. The French, at least since 1936, have been obsessed by working time. They said that they would not agree to a Directive which did not have a limit on the weekly hours of work. Eventually an amendment emerged with a maximum working week of 48 hours.

Other important issues which were raised included the many circumstances under which “derogations” could be allowed – to cater for situations, where it would not be practical to apply the rules of the Directive. In certain cases, it was argued, successfully, that the nature of the work was so different that it would not be possible to apply the rules of the Directive at all. Eventually, all transport activities along with offshore work, sea fishing and doctors in training were excluded from the Directive, but each of these exclusions was the subject of many hours of difficult negotiation, before it was conceded. The Commission, in the person of Jean Degimbe, my Director-General, had a statement put in the Council minutes to the effect that the Commission would bring forward proposals for regulating working time in respect of each of the sectors and activities excluded from the Directive.

A third principle bone of contention was a German amendment to the effect that the weekly rest day should, in principle, be a Sunday. This last proposal brought me quite a number of lunch invitations. I think I would have been scrupulous anyway, but their money was wasted, because I was not in a position to influence events, if I had wanted to. At the same time, the debate over the opening of shops on Sundays in England and Wales was raging and both sides in the argument came to lobby me. Similarly, the organisation responsible for offshore work in the UK lobbied me regularly for its exclusion.

The proposal lost momentum during 1992, but was picked up again in 1993 by the Danish Presidency. The Council reached a Common Position in June 1993 in Luxembourg. The Common Position then went to the European Parliament for a second reading. The rapporteur this time round was Stephen Hughes, a British Labour MEP. The Parliament’s Social Affairs Committee had decided to hold a meeting in Thessaloniki in Greece. I was still not allowed to speak on behalf of the Commission, so my future boss, Rosendo Gonzalez went with me. Stephen Hughes was a pragmatist and he steered the Directive through the Parliament. It was finally adopted on 4 November 1993.

The Commission Opinion on an Equitable Wage made equally slow progress, but was adopted by the Commission on 1 September 1993 (COM(93) 388 final). Pádraig Flynn was appointed as Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs in early 1993. He was an Irish conservative. The European Parliament decided to discuss the Commission Opinion at its plenary meeting in Strasbourg, soon after he had been appointed. I had to provide a written brief and a draft speech. I also had to go to Strasbourg for an oral briefing. It was the first time Mr Flynn had met me and several other Commission officials. He was a very tall man with broad shoulders and an impressive presence. I was particularly impressed by the fact that he took two or three minutes to talk about me and where I came from. He then asked me what this “socialist nonsense” was all about. My speech of several pages was reduced to half a page. When it came to the discussion in Parliament, Mr Flynn read it beautifully and gave the impression that this Opinion was dear to his heart and he had spent a lifetime working on it!

A Royal Invitation

Towards the end of 1991, my first year in the Commission, I was sitting at my desk, when I received a strange telephone call. A very posh sounding lady by the name of Patsy Knight said she was ringing from the Prince of Wales’ office in Windsor Castle. Sir Geoffrey Holland, who was by then Permanent Secretary of the Department of Employment had given her my name. Her story was so surreal that at first I thought it was some sort of practical joke. But it wasn’t. Every year the Prince arranged for a group of “young” people who would be the next generation of “movers and shakers” across the political spectrum to get together to exchange ideas and establish a network. I was neither young (aged 52) nor a high-flyer, but she was looking for someone to bring a European perspective. I accepted the invitation. Other people at Windsor Castle with me included Jenny Abramsky, who was already high up in the BBC hierarchy. She was called away after a couple of hours. Claude Moraes, who became a senior Labour Member of the European Parliament was also there. Then there was Rachel Squire, who was elected as Labour MP for Dunfermline West at the 1992 election. Rachel was a very modest person, but reputably a very good and popular constituency MP. She was on the Defence Select Committee and came to stay with us, when the Committee came to Brussels. Unfortunately she died prematurely in 2006.

Staying in Brussels?

Towards the end of 1993, my secondment from the Department of Employment was coming to an end. The Commission were keen for me to stay and there was a possibility that I might be able to get a one-year contract from the Commission as an “auxiliary”. As ever, there was no guarantee that I would be appointed before my secondment came to an end. This put me in a quandary. There were three possibilities. The first was that I went to back to the Department of Employment. If I took the job with the Commission, assuming it materialised, there were two options with regard to my Civil Service pension. Either I could freeze it and take an actuarially reduced pension at the age of sixty, or I could pay voluntary contributions for the further year that I remained with the Commission. Neither of these was at all attractive.

I had several conversations with the Personnel Officer in the Department, but the early ones were not at all productive. I then telephoned him on a Thursday round about my birthday in November. He asked me what I wanted to do and I repeated that none of the options were appealing. He then asked about early retirement and I said that I wasn’t interested under the terms that they could offer. He then said that they were looking for volunteers for redundancy. If I was interested, I would need to let him know by the following Monday. Of course, there was absolutely no guarantee, or even a probability, that I would be offered anything after the year as an auxiliary expired – and that contract could not be extended – but I decided to accept the offer. So, in January 1994, at the age of 54, I became a Civil Service Pensioner, with the same pension as I would have received, if I had carried on until I was 60.

I was of particular value to the Commission, because I was one of the few people in DGV who was a native English speaker and who could write good English. John Morley and later his colleague, Danny Brennan, were the others. Herman van Zonneveld’s unit was the most high-profile unit in the Directorate-General and the Commissioner and Director-General often had to make speeches in English. In addition, John Morley and I were the only ones with a British Civil Service background of briefing ministers and by this time I was rather good at it.

These qualities became even more important when Pádraig Flynn took over as Commissioner. In the early days I did a lot of briefing for him and I got the impression that I was one of the few people in the Directorate-General, whose advice he trusted – I never flattered or told people what I thought they wanted to hear, but I had a pretty good sense of what was politically possible or necessary.

Before that Hywel Jones had come back to DGV, first as Deputy-Director-General and then, almost immediately on the retirement of Jean Degimbe, as Acting Director-General. Towards the end of 1994, relations between him and John Morley had become strained and he asked me, through his assistant, Sarah Evans, to take a new job coordinating speech-writing. I was uneasy about this, but felt it would be difficult to refuse, especially as, by this time, I was looking to get a new contract, as a temporary agent, for which I would need Hywel Jones’ support. I talked it over with Jennifer who advised that, at my age, I should not do anything I was uncomfortable with. I went back to Sarah Evans and told her. I asked, if it would make any difference to my contract and she assured me that Mr Jones would be disappointed, but that it wouldn’t make any difference – and to be fair, it didn’t.

Obtaining the contract as a temporary agent was fraught with difficulties. Traditionally there was an age limit of 55 for new recruits, which would have excluded me. However, the UKREP and the DGV argued successfully that the age limit should be removed, because the EU was developing a policy of non-discrimination against older workers. This was going against the trend in many countries of offering employees early retirement in order to avoid redundancies – the very policy which I had benefited from a year earlier. I managed to line up in support of my application the UKREP, the Irish cabinet (Pádraig Flynn), Hywel Jones and both the CBI and TUC representatives in Brussels. I was supposed to fly through the interview, which I did until a Trade Union representative asked me some questions about the European Parliament.

First of all I made the mistake of being rather dismissive about its importance and then he asked me how many British Labour MEPs there were. That is the sort of detail that I have never considered particularly important. I began to waffle, but, fortunately, Sarah Evans, who was on the panel, helped me out. The panel approved my appointment, but it then had to go through a process, which involved the trade union representatives. Scurrilous articles appeared in informal in-house publications, about this retired British civil servant who was trying to take a job, which could have been done by a younger person. I managed to counter this argument by pointing out that I had actually been made compulsorily redundant by the British Government. I was becoming anxious by this time, so, when my appointment was finally agreed, I pressed to start as early as possible. I re-joined the Commission on 1 November 1995, nine months after my previous contract had ended. It was also two days before my 56th birthday. That potentially was a big mistake, to which I will return later.

From about 1993, with Herman van Zonneveld, I got involved with studying the relationship between flexibility, security and employment and I ran a series of small study groups to examine aspects of this. While I was “unemployed” I wrote a paper for the Commission on this subject. The related issue of Work Organisation featured prominently in Jacques Delors’ White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, which was the most important document, produced during his period as President of the Commission. Although my former colleague, Lars-Erik Andreassen was the expert on Work Organisation, responsibility for taking that matter forward was transferred back to Herman van Zonneveld and delegated to me.

Japanese interludes

Not for the first time in my career, there was a “turf war” between one of my bosses and her counterpart in another part of the organisation. On this occasion it was between my relatively new Director, Odile Quintin, who was in charge of industrial relations and Karl-Johann Lönnroth, the Finnish Director responsible for Employment Policy. There were regular conferences between Europe and Japan, involving the European Commission, the Japanese Ministry of Labour and representatives of employers and workers on both sides. In 1996, the Conference was to be held in Tokyo and the theme was “Flexibility and Security”. Odile Quintin didn’t want to go, but she didn’t want another Director to go either.

After a period of wrangling, in which I took no part, it was decided that I should go, much to the chagrin of the other Directors, who wanted this perk. I went as one of the two keynote speakers from the European side – the other was Gerhard Bosch from the Institut für Arbeit und Technik in Gelsenkirchen. The Commission team consisted of Hywel Jones, who was still Acting Director-General, accompanied by Fay Devonic, who was head of the international unit, and me.

This was one of the highlights of my career. I had never been to Asia before. We were supposed to fly with Sabena, the Belgian airline, in Business Class. Fay Devonic made a mistake with the booking – she should have got a reduced rate. To compensate, we were put in ‘J’ class (almost First Class) and travelled in the same compartment as the King of the Belgians had travelled the previous week. There were about 10 large well-padded reclining seats in the compartment. A steward took our coats as soon as we arrived and offered us drinks, whenever we wanted them: a luxurious experience, far removed from the Economy Class that I was used to! (Hywel Jones, who had booked separately, went in Business Class, much to his annoyance!)

In ‘J’ class – the journey home – Fay Devonic and me

We arrived in Japan on a Saturday morning in October. We stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel. In the early afternoon, the three of us went for a walk. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I could not read anything that was written on street or other “information” signs. The nearest railway and underground station was Shinjuku, which had over 60 exits and entrances. We walked past one of these and were impressed by the thousands of people pouring out of the station.

Hywel Jones had been in contact with a former girlfriend who was married to a Japanese man and lived in Yokohama on the Pacific coast. We decided to go and visit her on the Sunday morning. We had to travel by train from Shinjuku, changing twice. The first problem was buying train tickets. We spent a long time trying to buy tickets from a machine. Eventually we discovered that the machine belonged to a different railway company from the one we needed. We made the journey without major problems and were fortunate to be able to see inside a Japanese house.

The conference went very well. Again we were fortunate to get under the surface of life in Japan. All the people we met were very courteous and, within strict limits, quite open about their problems and policies for dealing with them.

Japanese bedroom (with Welsh quilt) Zushi, 27 October 1996

My name sheet at the Conference

It came to pass that I had two further dealings with the Japanese. In early 2000 another Conference was arranged in Tokyo. This time, I was asked to go as an expert. (I can’t remember what I was supposed to be an expert on.) This time we travelled in Business Class, which was far less exotic. We again had a free day on the Sunday – it was in the days when with a (cheaper) APEX ticket, the stay had to include a Saturday night.

On the Sunday morning I decided to walk in the opposite direction to the one I’d taken in 1996. I walked to a park. I remember noting that there seemed to be more ‘down and outs’ than there had been the last time. In this park there was a Shinto temple, which I wanted to look at. When I got there I was told politely but firmly that I couldn’t go in, because a wedding ceremony was about to begin. I stood at a discreet distance from the entrance – alongside a Japanese couple - to watch the people arrive. To my surprise, when all the guests were installed, the doorkeeper gestured to the Japanese couple and then to me to step inside and sit at the back, having, of course, first taken our shoes off. The ceremony consisted of a man intoning ritual formulae, interspersed with the beating of cymbals or other instruments. Afterwards the guests gathered outside for photographs. The bride’s mother and attendants had incredibly beautiful dresses. The bride wore a white dress. She had dark spiky hair with what looked like rollers at the end of each spike – not particularly attractive! The bridegroom’s uncle invited me to join the party. He was saying that traditional Shinto weddings were fairly rare. Then I was invited to have my photograph taken with the bride. It being Japan, that meant quite a lot of photos. I have to admit that the bride did not seem particularly impressed or interested, but I was told afterwards that it was considered to be lucky to have a Caucasian at one’s wedding.

Japanese wedding February 2000

The Conference again went smoothly, along similar lines to the previous one, except that, as an ‘expert’ my speech was much shorter. At the end of the Conference I learned that the plane that I was due to fly back on was overbooked. Somehow I was the unfortunate (!) one who was selected to stay in Japan for an extra two nights. I took advantage of my free day to go on an excursion to Mount Fuji, which was very impressive. We were about 40 kilometres out of Tokyo, when we stopped in a huge carpark by a shopping centre for a ‘comfort’ break. We had got back into the coach and the coach was driving off, when two ladies were spotted in the carpark, frantically waving their arms. Not the best place to be left stranded!

My final involvement with the Japanese was in 2002. By then I had retired. A few days after my father had died, I received a phone call from a former colleague, Tony Lockett, to ask if I would write the report for a Japanese visit to Brussels in the spring. I did this, so my progress with the Japanese was from Keynote Speaker to Expert to Secretary!

Back to the real world

The new Director-General in 1996 was Allan Larsson. Allan was an economist and a former Swedish Trade Unionist. In my experience the Swedish Trade Unions were the most progressive in Europe. Alan was a pragmatist and believed passionately in the need for a different, more participative, less confrontational approach to the organisation of work. He persuaded the Commission to accept the idea of producing a Green Paper (i.e. a discussion document) on work organisation. I was charged with producing this document. I was going to say “writing” this document. In fact I typed it on my computer, but Alan wrote most of it. In the autumn of 1997 the Commission published its Green Paper: Partnership for a new organization of work.

As an aside, Allan was passionate about the need to adapt to technological change, rather than to fight against it. He pointed out that if there had been no technological change over the previous generation, in order to sustain current levels of telephone communication the whole population of Sweden would have to employed as telephone operators – and that was before the internet had really taken hold!

Allan and I spent a lot of time, mostly separately, travelling round Europe, discussing the Green Paper at conferences organised variously by employer and trade union organisations – occasionally jointly. In particular I remember going to Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, Dublin, Helsinki and Bonn. I also went to Lisbon in the following year. The Irish took the Green Paper very seriously and at the time transformed their industrial relations arrangements nationally from a backward-looking confrontational style to a new approach based on partnership. At the Conference in Dublin, Pádraig Flynn was the main speaker. I also spoke. Mr Flynn at the beginning of his talk said that he disliked speaking at the same event as one of his officials, because the official wrote both speeches (which was true) but kept the best bits for themselves. In this case I don’t think that was true. The most interesting Conference was organised in Bonn by the German employers’ organisation (BDA). Allan Larsson was supposed to be the main Commission representative, but had to send his apologies to say that he would arrive only in the afternoon. So I was the only Commission representative. The BDA were hostile to the Green Paper, not because of its content, but because they suspected (I think wrongly on this occasion) that the Commission wanted to start interfering in matters, which, in Germany, were nothing to do with Government and a fortiori nothing to do with the European Commission. Speaker after speaker expressed their hostility in no uncertain terms. When I am not being attacked personally, I don’t feel uncomfortable in these situations. I can’t remember what I said or did, but I look back on the experience with amusement rather than humiliation. The hostility was intensified in the afternoon, but Allan Larsson had been a politician and he was more than capable of standing up for himself. There were two postscripts to this. Around Christmas, a very large parcel arrived in my office: a case of German wine with the compliments of the BDA! A few months later I was at a meeting in Brussels and a German (not from the BDA!) came up to me and apologised for the unforgiveable rudeness of his compatriots!

Helsinki

At about the same time Pádraig Flynn was invited to a meeting in Dublin with the top men in multinational firms in Ireland – IBM etc. – about his proposal for a Works Council Directive. His office persuaded them that it would be better if one of the officials from the unit responsible for it went to talk to them first. Despite the fact that I had never really understood it, nor had much sympathy for it, I was delegated to go. I was invited to meet them for breakfast and then talk to them about the Directive. As I had expected, they were not very keen on the proposal and they asked me a lot of searching questions. I do remember thinking how kind and polite they had been throughout. I certainly didn’t feel as though I had been given a grilling. Afterwards the organiser asked me if I liked whiskey. I said that I did. He said that, as they had given me such a “rough time”, they wanted to buy me a bottle of Middletons, but they didn’t want to waste their money, if I didn’t like it. They would send me a bottle. I had completely forgotten about this, but a few months later, I was working late one evening (as usual) when the evening porter rang me to say that there was a man in reception asking to see me. I went down and he gave me a bottle of Middletons – a numbered bottle, to be registered in my name. It is the most beautiful whiskey I have ever tasted. So much so that, several years later, I was in Dublin airport and I bought another one at a cost of 50 Irish pounds.

In the early nineties, when the Working Time Directive was being discussed in COREPER, it was agreed that various sectors and activities would be excluded from the Directive. At the time Jean Degimbe, our Director-General, placed on record in the minutes of COREPER that the Commission would bring forward proposals in respect of each of the sectors and activities excluded. I don’t know whether anyone else would have remembered this, but I did and drew it to the attention of Pádraig Flynn. Sometime later Mr Flynn invited our Director-General, Allan Larsson, and my Director, Odile Quintin and officials from our unit to a meeting to discuss the work programme for the year. At the preparatory meeting the night before, everyone in the room thought it would be a bad idea to make proposals on working time. I said that, nevertheless, I thought that was what Mr Flynn would want to do. I was instructed to write a note setting out the arguments against, which I did. However, Mr Flynn, as I had predicted, wanted to go ahead with proposals on working time.

Over the years since the Working Time Directive was adopted, negotiations had been ongoing in most of the excluded sectors in the Commission’s Joint Industrial Committees. These covered: road transport, rail transport, sea transport, inland waterways and sea fishing. I took part in all these discussions. In addition the Commission had studies made of the situation in respect of offshore work and doctors in training.

The Commission decided to produce a package of arrangements for dealing with each of the excluded sectors and activities. I was instructed to draft the umbrella proposal amending the Working Time Directive. This I did by removing all the exclusions and then allowing specific provisions in respect of each activity. I have described elsewhere the painstakingly thorough process that was gone through when the Sex Discrimination Bill was drawn up in the UK some twenty years earlier – though I suspect that the process is not nearly as thorough nowadays. In this case, however, I drafted a proposal on my word processor and it went through the Commission relatively unscathed.

It then had to go through the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. On this occasion I was the main Commission representative at most of the meetings. I had retained my ability to produce constructive compromises and I believe I was helpful in solving the many difficult issues that arose in the course of the long negotiations. The rapporteur for the European Parliament this time round was Michel Rocard, a former French Prime Minister and, in my opinion, one of the best. During the Committee stages, I was the person responsible for answering his queries. I have to say that he was always very polite and gentle towards me.

The Directive was finally adopted just before I left Brussels - on 22 June 2000.

A few years before I retired the Commission introduced a new staff appraisal system. In order to avoid the common practice of nearly everyone being given top marks, each Directorate and unit was given an aggregate total of the marks to be allocated (something like 24 per member of staff). The top mark was 33; anything below 16 required “action”. By this time I was the only non-lawyer in our unit, which was mainly a law-making unit. I was also one of the few, who were not fully-fledged fonctionnaires. Consequently, I think I always had a slight sense of inferiority. I was pleased and surprised, therefore, when Rosendo Gonzalez Dorrego, who, by this time, had been promoted to be my head of unit, came to me to discuss the markings. He said: of course you are the best, but I would like to ask you to give up a couple of marks to give to someone whom we want to promote (bearing in mind that at that stage I was not looking for promotion).

Rosendo and me October 1999

My initial contract as a temporary agent began on 1st November 1995. It was made abundantly clear at the time that I (and other people who were appointed in the same batch) could not expect the contract to be extended, nor could we expect to have favourable treatment to enable us to become fully-fledged fonctionnaires. (Previous practice had been to extend contracts to five years and then hold a limited competition for establishment as a fonctionnaire.) In the course of 1998, however, representations were made and the Commission finally agreed to allow extensions for another year to allow time to organise a new competition. This extension would take me up to 31st October 1999 – 3 days before my 60th birthday.

I had discovered at an induction meeting, when I became a temporary agent, that the qualification for a Commission retirement pension was as follows: Either 10 years’ service as a fonctionnaire or temporary agent; or reaching the age of sixty before retirement. I was going to be 3 days’ short! The monetary value of the pension was considerably better than the modest ‘redundancy’ pay that I would receive as a temporary agent under 60. But the pension scheme also brought with it lifelong coverage under the Commission’s medical scheme, which provides worldwide coverage for the retired person and to some extent their spouse. This would have been particularly important, because, at that time, we were planning to go to live in France. In the course of 1999, I tried hard to get an extension for a few days. Everyone was sympathetic, but “The Powers That Be” were adamant that they could not make an exception for me, because it would create a precedent.

The only possibility was to take and succeed in the competition to become a fonctionnaire. This was a tough competition, involving a lot of preparatory work – and knowledge. The success rate was about 25%. As usual, there was a dispute between the Commission and the staff unions, which resulted in a long delay in the holding of this competition. I decided to apply. August in the Commission is almost dead. I remember spending a warm afternoon in August 1999 filling in the long and detailed application form and wondering why I was bothering, as I had no intention of taking the examination. In mid-August we started to make firm plans to move to Antibes. At the end of August, my father, who was 88 at the time, was knocked down by a car and badly injured. He lived in Skegness. I, or we, travelled to Skegness from Brussels most weekends to see him. We already owned a property in Skegness and we decided very quickly to give notice to the tenants, with a view to moving there in December. By October, we had given notice to the landlord to leave our house in Brussels and Jennifer had given notice to leave her job at the International School in Brussels.

Round about the second weekend in October, I went on my own to spend a few days in Skegness with my father. On the Monday I went into the town centre. When I got back, my father said that he had received a telephone call from “a foreign gentleman”. I managed to get back to him: it was the man in the Directorate responsible for personnel matters. He asked if I had applied for the competition to become a fonctionnaire. I said that I had, but I was going to withdraw. (This was on my ‘to do’ list!) He asked if I would be interested in staying on until the results of the competition were announced. The problem was that the Commission relied on temporary agents to man many areas of activity; the competition had been delayed yet again and in the meantime these posts would be vacant. I had to speak to the owner of our house in Brussels. Fortunately, he had been unable to let the house, so we were able to stay on. Interviews had already been held at the International School to fill Jennifer’s post, but they agreed to keep her on for the time being. The outcome was that I stayed in post over the winter and I gave notice to retire on 30th June – with a pension and medical cover.

Important People

In the course of my career, I met a number a number of important people, many of whom I have mentioned above.

The Queen came to Brussels in the early 1980s. The staff of UKREP along with our spouses were summoned to the British Ambassador’s residence, which was then situated near the centre of Brussels, overlooking the Park. We had to be there some forty minutes before the Queen was due to arrive and were lined up around the room. When the Queen arrived, she went one way round the room, while the Duke of Edinburgh went round the other way. He asked me a searching question about what Europe was doing about unemployment, to which I replied that the European Social Fund was designed to alleviate the effects of unemployment. He then went on to speak to Rob Hubbard. Rob’s wife, Caroline, was a First Secretary, seconded from the Treasury. Prince Philip asked Rob what he did. He said he was a teacher at the British School of Brussels. When the Duke asked: What are you doing here then? Rob replied: Just following the missus around! The Duke muttered words to the effect I know what you mean!

I met the Prime Minister of Swaziland and two future Prime Ministers of Luxembourg and Presidents of the European Commission – Jacques Santer and Jean-Claude Juncker. I never got very close to a British Prime Minister. I went to a Labour Party rally in Birmingham just before the 1964 General Election, at which Roy Jenkins introduced Harold Wilson as “The next Prime Minister”. I also went to a Conference about the employment of disabled people at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in Westminster, which James Callaghan addressed. I listened in on Edward Heath’s conversation with Maurice Macmillan reported above. And I worked closely with Michael Howard, who was leader of the Conservative Party for a time, but never became Prime Minister.

I had more contact with future and past French Prime Ministers. I have already mentioned my dealings with Michel Rocard on the amendment of the Working Time Directive. Much earlier, 1982 or 1983, I went to a meeting of the Council of Ministers in Luxembourg. The reform of the European Social Fund was on the agenda. This was a very sensitive issue, because it involved the potential transfer of considerable sums of money from net contributors to the Community budget in favour of net beneficiaries. The President decided that the discussion should be restricted to Ministers plus one official. I was excluded from this discussion. At one point I decided to go to the toilet. While I was there the French Minister, Pierre Bérégovoy, came in. I asked him how things were going in the meeting. As I had expected his answer was non-committal, but he seemed ready to enter into a conversation. He had previously been President Mittérand’s Secretary-General and he asked me if I knew his friend, Robert Armstrong, who, as Secretary to the Cabinet, had been his British counterpart at that time. Needless to say, I didn’t know him, as Robert Armstrong was many places higher in the hierarchy than I was. Pierre Bérégovoy later became Prime Minister from April 1992 to March 1993.

What did I achieve in nearly 40 years?

My special subject at University had been the existentialist writers Sartre, Camus, Malraux and particularly St Exupéry. I don’t think I was ever influenced very much by Sartre, other than to find him repugnant, but I was probably influenced subconsciously by St Exupéry. As a gross simplification, his philosophy boiled down to the need of individuals to give a meaning to their existence through their own actions and the influence their actions had on other people. My achievements as a civil servant can be measured against these two criteria.

In the grand scheme of things, I did not achieve a great deal. One of Malraux’s heroes wanted to leave a scar on this world: Je veux laisser une cicatrice sur cette terre. I certainly didn’t do that, nor did I want to. I was not a Hitler nor a Stalin. Nor was I an Einstein or a Pasteur. Until the tragedy of Brexit, the United Kingdom Government and European Union were forces for peace and harmony in the world. Although there were many aberrations and inefficiencies, their well-functioning machinery of government was a vital component in the cohesion of society. The Civil Service is responsible for ensuring that the machine works and (it is to be hoped) continues to improve. Each civil servant is a cog in that machine. It is not glamourous, but it is essential.

Was I ever more than just a cog in the wheel? For the most part, the answer is probably: “No, but I was a well-tuned, piece of machinery”. But, there were a number of occasions when I was more than that. I am particularly proud of the work I did on Eastern Europe. No doubt if someone else had been there they would have done a good job, but I do believe that I had the right combination of experience, international outlook and resourcefulness to do an outstanding job. I often have difficulties working when I feel constrained by rules that I don’t fully understand: in this job, there were no rules. Although it would be arrogant to suggest that I made a huge difference, I do think I played a small role in smoothing the transition from a planned economy to a market economy in Czechoslovakia and Poland. I don’t think I could say the same about Hungary, but I was less involved personally and the other people involved on both sides were more complicated.

I also think I did a better job than most would have done in Swaziland, though not until Bob Thomas had given me a blueprint to follow. There I developed a coherent education and training policy, which I “sold” to the Swaziland Government of the day. In that case, however, I had no lasting influence, because the policies changed a few months later, following a mini coup.

The six months I spent as Chairman of the Social Questions Working Group in Brussels tell a similar story. It was certainly the most prestigious post I held and one which I fulfilled effectively and with imagination. I certainly enjoyed it and look back on it with pride. However, the actual achievements were negligible. I also broke new ground in setting up the regional teams in TVEI. There again I did a good job. I set up a system which worked well for the three years I was there, but I left because a new system was being put in its place!

Most of my other jobs fall into the category of doing a good job in a system that was fairly well established. This is true of Walsall, Birmingham and the various policy jobs I had in London: on Manpower Policy, Equal Pay and Industrial Relations and Employment of Disabled People. I was less effective as a Deputy Manager at Wolverhampton Employment Exchange and as Operations Manager in the Disablement Resettlement Service. The least said about my spell in Maurice Macmillan’s Private Office, the better! Fortunately the combined total of these three jobs was less than two years!

I am ambivalent about the value of my work in the European Commission. The work I did on work organisation was thoroughly worthwhile, but it is questionable whether we had much long-term influence on the improvement in working practices. Much of my work focused on the Working Time Directive. I was never convinced that it was a “good thing”, but nor was I convinced that it was a “bad thing”. As a (British) civil servant I always took the view that it was my job to set out the arguments for Ministers (and later Commissioners) for and against a policy, but once they had taken a decision to implement the policy in accordance with their wishes. I also considered that, when Ministers (or Commissioners) gave an undertaking in Parliament, or elsewhere, it was my job to ensure that that undertaking was honoured. In the case of the Working Time Directive, it is possible that if I had not been so assiduous in trying to find a compromise between the UK and the other delegations, the Directive may have floundered and a source of friction between the UK and Europe might have been avoided. On the other hand Labour politicians, during the unsuccessful Referendum Campaign placed some importance on retaining the right to four weeks’ holiday, which was created by the Directive. It is distinctly possible that, if I had not been there, the extension of the Directive to cover ‘doctors in training’ might never have happened. I was possibly the only one that remembered undertakings given by the Commission in Council minutes to bring forward proposals in respect of the sectors and activities excluded from the Directive. I was the one who pointed out this commitment to Padraig Flynn. I drafted the new proposal and, drawing on my experience as Chairman of the Social Questions Group, I was prolific in finding imaginative solutions to tricky negotiating issues.

On a personal level, my work enabled me to spend sixteen and a half years living and working abroad. For me life is always more colourful, when I am abroad. I spent my 21st birthday in Switzerland and France. I said to myself then that I wanted to spend all my main birthdays abroad. Thus, I spent my 30th birthday in Swaziland and my 40th and 60th in Brussels. I have since spent my 65th, 70th and 75th birthdays in Antibes in France. I missed out on my 50th, which I spent in Watford, but a few months later we went back to Brussels. (I still had a good birthday!) As a result of my work I visited every country in the European Union (of 15) apart from Spain. (My boss was Spanish and said I could only go in his place if I learned Spanish!) I also went to Japan, to Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Iceland and Cyprus in Europe and Swaziland, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Kenya in Africa. Not bad for a boring civil servant!