Everyday cosmopolitanism in the European Commission

Abstract

There is a rich body of literature on the functioning of the European Commission and the profile of its officials in the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet, the empirical evidence on the new generation Commission officials operating in the post-reform Commission bureaucracy is scarce. What kind of individuals end up working for the Commission? How do they think and behave on a daily basis? This article provides an insight into a crucial aspect of the everyday behaviour of Commission officials and whether national identity and categorizations play a role in the Commission. The analysis of the functions and meanings of nationality in a multinational context and the ways in which officials deal with nationality provides evidence of cosmopolitan dispositions and practices. In contrast to what has been previously argued in the literature, the empirical findings point to the effect of self-selection, selection and organizational socialization in establishing cosmopolitanism in the Commission.

Keywords:

• Cosmopolitanism
• European Commission
• nationality
• selection
• socialization

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Willem Schinkel, Senem Aydın Düzgit and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

In human resource management, this process is described by the Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) Theory (Schneider 1987). The ASA theory argues that organizations are occupied by people who are similar to each other. The homogeneity results from the three phases of the ASA cycle: ‘organizations attract people to them who share their values. Organizations select those people who share their values. And finally, there is attrition from those people who find they do not share the organization's values (i.e., they chose to leave)’ (Billsberry 2004: 1; emphasis original).

Quoted from http://europa.eu/epso/discover/looking_for/index_en.htm (accessed 1 December 2009).

By contrast, the Council and its related structures are organized primarily according to a territorial logic (and secondarily sectoral logic) whereby it is legitimate to defend national interests. Yet socialization research on the Council is equally ambiguous. Whereas quantitative research has concluded that national socialization shapes the behaviour of officials in working groups (Beyers 2005), qualitative research on COREPER (Permanent Representatives Committee) participants (Lewis 2005) has provided evidence for supranational socialization working hand in hand with national role conceptions.

I would like to thank all the Commission officials I interviewed for providing me information on these personal details.

As Chris Shore also notes, ‘“cosmopolitan” in the context of the Commission means “multinational” rather than multiracial. … Most officials are white, Caucasian and middle-class and the representation of ethnic minorities within the EU civil service is not an issue given any weight’ (Shore 2000: 192). Amongst my respondents, there was only one official with a minority background.

I have not openly asked officials their reasons for joining the Commission. Still, even though the respondents referred to the cosmopolitan backgrounds of officials, they did not refer to the ‘European ideal’ or to being pro-European integration.

Presumably, this is a factor that plays a relatively larger role for officials from Eastern Europe, since a comparative civil service career at the home country is financially less rewarding.

Seconded national experts who only work temporarily for the Commission also change (Official #22). The research of Trondal et al. (2008) comparing the loyalties of former and current seconded national experts (SNEs) has shown that their allegiance to the Commission is temporary whereas the allegiance to the EU tends to be long-lasting. Thus, the attitudinal change happens at a more generic level.

Even though Commission officials enjoy the unique multicultural context they find themselves in (Official #10), having coffee, lunch or an after-work drink with a compatriot is also a welcome break – a break from the constant shift between languages and from having to explain national idiosyncrasies. As such, sharing the same nationality is a way of avoiding nationality small talk.