AFTERMATH

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So what happened after I came down from the Brugge Mountain with my tablets of stone (Certificat d'Études Européennes).

Did I find my people still adoring the Golden Calf of Westminster, the Mother of All ...?

Did I lead my people to the promised land of milk and honey, then called the EEC?

Did anyone even notice my return from my year long pilgrimage to the Mountain?

Well, sadly, apart from the maintenance of the status quo in the first consideration above, neither of the other two happened and I ended up passing the rest of my life largely un-noticed by the great Irish public.

That did not mean, however, that it was all in vain. I gained much from my year and I hope I passed some of it along to my work colleagues at least.

So a wee recap below of what Brugge meant to me at certain moments during the rest of my life.


A QUESTION OF CONFIDENCE


The first benefit was an intangible one - confidence. There were two aspects to this. It was my first time living away from home and, in one sense, the challenge was magnified by being in a multi-national community. Ireland then, unlike today, was a homogeneous and very conservative society.

On top of this there was the challenge of going into a top rated European post graduate institution straight out of UCD.

Coming to terms with these challenges gave me a degree of confidence in myself which stayed with me. To be honest, the challenges melted away rather than being overcome. The people were nice and the academic gap was not only less than I feared; in some cases it was not there at all, or even in the opposite direction. But these are stories for another time.


LEARNING THE ROPES


Then there was the content. I have to admit that I already knew a bit about the EEC having done a masters in European Studies. But the emphasis there was on the economic and it was only while in the College that I got a proper handle on the institutional setup in the EEC.

Then there was the background to the European project - a visit to Flanders Fields and a close reading of the Rector's book L'Idée Européenne and of Servan Schreiber's Le Défi Americain.

A visit to Strasbourg, to the Council of Europe, meant I was always conscious of the difference between it and the EU, and ensured that I didn't confuse the two European courts. Direct contact with Commission officials meant that I never confused the Commission with the Council as some of my subsequent bosses at home were prone to do.

As it happened I was not involved in Ireland's application to join the EEC though I was involved after we joined -- with Ecofins, EIB and the establishment of EBRD.


NEGOTIATING THE EBRD


The negotiation and establishment of the EBRD was driven by the French, a hangover from an immediately preceding EU Presidency, and one of French President Mitterand's Grandes Oeuvres, the idea for which was claimed by Jacques Attali. The Bank had the EU as a majority shareholder and Ireland held the EU Presidency during the negotiations in the first half of 1990.

[l-r] Jean Claude Trichet: Head of French delegation. Jacques Attali: Chairman (subsequently EBRD President). Michael Somers (La Chaise Vide): EU Presidency. Pól Ó Duibhir: Irish delegation. David Williamson: Secretary General, EU Commission. Antonio Maria Costa: Head of EU Commission Economic Service (subsequently EBRD Secretary General).
The lady standing at the back is Anne le Lorier.
Kléber Conference Centre, Paris, 1990

I remember that particular moment only too well. We were picking up around 2pm after lunch and Michael Somers (EU Presidency) had not appeared. Attali and Trichet were arguing and Costa was trying to get me to make an intervention on behalf of the Presidency. I held out, wisely I think, until the real EU Presidency appeared.

At one stage my boss, Michael Somers, refused an invitation from Attali to attend one of his control-freak posh dinners and I was deputed to represent the EU Presidency. Some people, when they heard of this, envied me the posh dinner in one of Paris's top restaurants. Me, I was terrified. The agenda was hot and the personalities involved were well above my payscale - Mme. Gigou, Horst Kohler, Mario Sarcinelli, Nigel Wicks and so on. I won't go into it all here. I have documented it on my website. But I do think, on reflection, that my time in Brugge did make some contribution to me carrying it off.

I also had to chair the EU expert meetings in the negotiations, another fallout from the Irish Presidency. Thanks to a very good Presidency manual prepared by the Irish Foreign Affairs Ministry, strong and continuous guidance from the French Treasury's Anne le Lorier, and, I'm sure to my Brugge background, I think I made a fair fist of that job.


BRIEFING KEN CLARKE


While I'm on the Irish Presidency I might as well report (1996) that in my role as Irish EIB desk officer, and in the course of pre-Ecofin confessions, I ended up warning Ken Clarke, then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, not to go along with proposals to over-extend the EIB risk profile as it could seriously threaten the EIB's credit rating, result in higher borrowing costs and even destabilise the EIB itself. My Minister, Ruairi Quinn, looked a bit taken aback at my intervention and I don't think Nigel Wicks who was advising his minister was at all pleased. I'll just put it down to Brugge having finally gone to my head.


FRENCH DOMINANCE OF EEC


Going back a bit to 1973, we had just joined the EEC, the default language of the Commission was French and the whole translation process for English was not yet in place. This meant that we often got documents in English which were transliterations from the French and incomprehensible to a non French-speaker. I like to think that my pursuit of economics in Brugge had armed me with a good French vocabulary in that area. I have recounted one example in a blog post.


THE BELGIAN AMBASSADOR

Pol Carrewyn & wife to be, Laura, in 1968

Another benefit I got from Brugge was invitations to the Belgian Embassy in Dublin. I think it was at the Foreign Affairs function, mentioned below, that I found that Pol Carrewyn who had been with me in Brugge had just been accredited Belgian Ambassador to Ireland. By then he had had some career including being shot in Egypt as far as I remember. And his lovely wife, Laura, was the same girl he had invited to the Grand Bal (College Dress Dance) all those years ago.


And then there was the great pleasure of a 40th anniversary class reunion in 2008.

And most recently a 50th anniversary reunion where I met many people I had not seen for 50 years.


ANCIEN(NE)S REVEALED


It's interesting to me that some of the people I had been aware of in Irish public life, turned out, at some stage or other, to have been to Brugge. The term traditionally used to describe this state of eminence, even in the English language, was ancien, the French term for past pupil or former student. I notice that in recent times it has been replaced by alumnus. The plural alumni is often misused to describe the singular. But what can you do in an age which has seen a classical education on the wane?

I'm giving just a very few examples below, but before you get there I should explain the term Promotion. I think it has French origins but in any event it applies to a class of a particular year, and in the College the years were named after people who were seen as having made a contribution to the the European project. John Amos Comenius was one such and my year was named after him which makes me a Comenian.

Mary Finlay Goeghegan,
Promotion: Richard N. COUDENHOVE-KALERGI (1972-1973)

Mary Finlay Geoghegan has had a long legal career and is now a judge on the Irish Supreme Court. I was familiar with her name and that of her husband who had been appointed Civil Service Arbitrator after a one day strike in which I took part. I think that was in the mid 1980s.

I only realised Mary had been to Bruges when she turned up at a function for anciens hosted by Noel Tracey, Minister of State for European Affairs, at the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2005.

David O'Sullivan
Promotion: Adam Jerzy CZARTORYSKI (1975-1976)

David O'Sullivan has had a long career in the European Commission and is curretly EU Ambassador to the US.

I became aware of David's name some years ago in connection with a European interest in the Irish third level education sector.

It was only more recently that I realised he had been to the College of Europe.

Frank Callanan,
Promotion: Paul-Henri SPAAK (1978-1979)

Frank Callanan is a Senior Counsel and distinguished author.

I ran into Frank on the O'Flaherty case in 2000. Frank was on the State's team and I was the Department of Finance desk officer for the EIB and effectively briefing the State's team. The case, which was originally heard in the High Court, escalated to the Supreme Court on appeal.

I was not aware at that stage that Frank had been to the College of Europe. I only became so aware when I ran into him again at the Foreign Affairs function mentioned above.

David McWilliams,
Promotion: Christopher DAWSON (1988-1989)

David McWilliams I knew was an economist and broadcaster. I used to enjoy his morning programme on Newstalk radio.

Again I only realised in later years that he too had been to the College of Europe.

In checking out his Wikipedia page I see he actually got his masters from the College. This is a serious upping of the ante for the College. I see from the College website that there are very strict protocols for the master's thesis which I think is expected to be about 20,000 words in its main part.

My recollection is that when I was there, the one year stint led to a postgraduate Certificate in Advanced European Studies, which could become a Diploma with a further year's study.

At the recent closure of the Simone Weil promotion there was much praise for the rigour, depth and originality of the best of the theses.

I'm afraid that my thesis for the cert was a modest affair of 10,000 words the point of which was to recommend that the EU Commission improve the way it measured price alignment in the Community.