One thing you can say for sure about the EU is they like their rules.
Take for instance Martin Selmayr. Not so long ago pretty much no one had ever heard of this guy even though he held one of the most powerful positions in the entire EU: chief of staff of the President of the EU Commission. Many people think it is actually him who has been running the Commission since 2014, not his boss Jean-Claude Junker. But anyway, Selmayr had a lot of power and really only one cloud on his horizon: Junker's term was set to end next year and as his chief of staff, Martin Selmayr's power would disappear in a great big poof! But, thankfully for Selmayr, the EU is full of complicated rules. Like all complex rules systems, there are plenty of loopholes if you know where to look. And luckily for Selmayr, the Eurotocracy will let you do pretty much anything as long as you stay within the rules, loopholes or not. Selmayr spotted that if he made the jump from staff for an elected official to civil servant, he would no longer have his power limited by the shelf-life of any benefactor. In the EU Civil Service, you get to stay as until you are ready to collect your (very generous) pension. If Selmayr could find a way to become General Secretary for the EU Civil Service, he would have a position more or less as powerful as the one he has now. And his current boss, the EU Commission President, can appoint the General Secretary of the EU Civil Service. So he had a clear path to ongoing power. There was just one problem. The EU already had a General Secretary of the Commission, and to be eligible to be appointed EU General Secretary you have to first serve as a Deputy General Secretary. How he did the next bit, I don't know exactly. I only know what he did: 1) He convinced the current General Secretary, Alexander Italianer, to resign. Like I say, I don't know how. But I bet it was cunning however he did it. 2) He got himself appointed Deputy General Secretary just as Italianer resigned. Then, at a meeting of the EU Commission that was held just after Italianer had resigned and he had been made Deputy General Secretary, he got his boss Jean-Claude Junker to announce Italianer's resignation and his appointment as Deputy General Secretary, and then slipped in a vote on Martin Selmayer being appointed General Secretary so late in the day that no one had noticed it was on the agenda. Job done. He also may have promised some incredibly generous golden handcuffs to the outgoing commissioners who are set to leave in 2019 as well. That would get him votes anyway. So Martin Selmayr is my hero. Not because he is good, or ethical. The guy just knows how to work a system. Really well. You've got to admire than, no matter how cynical his power grab was.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorSteve has many disparate and unconnected interests. This, he thinks, entitles him to claim the label "Renaissance Man." Archives
March 2019
Categories |