July 2, 2007
First sight: a student’s take on a typical week in Brussels
Just in case you know George Parker, I am a student. And as you may have guessed, I am not George Parker. I am Brian Parker, George’s youngest brother, and for the last 4 days I’ve been doing work experience here in Brussels with George, learning about the typical week of a journalist, which is, surprisingly if I’m honest, interesting. Oh, and I’m 14, so cut me some slack.
While my first day was certainly fun, I wasn’t exactly eased into things. My day began by attending the EU commission’s mid-day briefing (it seemed like a big thing at the time) and followed by lunch with an ambassador, though to be on the safe side I’m not saying which one. While I have since come to realise that I could learn to love a job that counts four-course meals as ‘work’, at the time all I could do was worry. A lot.
Though I had read up on as much about the EU as I possibly could before coming to Brussels, the briefing still went way over my head. Possibly because the speakers were using what I’ve generally heard referred to as technobabble. Probably because I was still thinking about the upcoming lunch with a person who, though not famous, was, certainly important.
I was not reassured by what appeared to be a typo on the invitation George had forwarded me. Apparently we were eating at a restaurant called Spud’s. As it turned out it wasn’t a typo, which, to put it lightly, didn’t make me feel any less nervous about the upcoming lunch. But as it turned out I had nothing to worry about. The ambassador was a very friendly man. Which, now I think about it, makes sense. Having an unpleasant ambassador would kind of defeat the purpose.
Now, I could write a long description of the lunch, but I doubt you would read it, so I’ll skip ahead to day three. Yes, day three. Day two consisted of two press conferences that didn’t go over my head, but weren’t exactly attention grabbing either. Think global warming and claims of corruption in the EU that, as usual, were false. In other words, a very average news day.
Day 3, on the other hand, was very interesting. Excruciating, but interesting. Another, real journalist summed up my feelings afterwards perfectly: "White wash!" We had just attended a report by Franco Frattini, the EU’s Commissioner of Justice, on the progress made by Romania and Bulgaria in cracking down on corruption and, in Bulgaria’s case, organised crime. The answer was not a lot, but Frattini made quite an effort not to admit it. To his credit, he didn’t lie about the little progress that had been made. No fiddling of the figures. But he did overblow them.
The single biggest overstatement, one that had several better informed people than myself laughing out loud when they heard it, was when Frattini said that Bulgaria and Romania had achieved ‘a lot of concrete results’. He was referring, he said, to people being taken to court on corruption charges, though, again to his credit, he didn’t deny that no had been convicted. But when a Bulgarian journalist asked for an example of someone being brought to court, he couldn’t give one. Now, I knew very little about this case before going into that conference. Most of my friends in Britain don’t even know that Bulgaria and Romania are in the EU. But after that conference I knew that something was up. I learnt that the report being published had been watered down since the original draft. The excuse given for this was that being too critical could have toppled the people in the Bulgarian and Romanian parliaments who were doing good. As well meaning an action as that is, it seems that these good people only think and say a lot of good. They appear not to do much of it.
Of course, this is all just my personal and very unprofessional opinion. It is also, I realise, a bit off topic from the rest of this blog. But it was the experience that made me start taking in the things I read about the EU, instead of just skimming over them. Which is a good thing, because if I hadn’t done a bit of research since then I would have come to the uneducated conclusion that the EU is entirely rubbish. Which it isn’t. But that’s for another blog, and another person who knows what they are talking about.
As for day 4. Well, it’s ongoing so…I couldn’t possibly comment.
