The appointment of Anthony Whelan as director-general of the European Commission’s competition wing is a welcome if rare example these days of an Irish person rising to a senior position in the EU institutions.
The competition directorate has been a familiar route to the top for Irish people. Peter Sutherland was appointed commissioner for this brief in 1985. Catherine Day and David O’Sullivan, who worked in his cabinet for a period, both later rose to the rank of secretary general of the European Commission. At one stage, with a number of senior Irish officials holding influential positions, Romano Prodi, European Commission president from 1999 to 2004, wondered how a “peripheral” country could have such influence.
Ireland punched well above its weight in large part because it was government policy from the time of accession to the EEC in 1973 to send some of the most able civil servants to Brussels. There was an acknowledgment that Ireland as a small country needed to be well represented.
However, that conveyor belt has now come to a halt, with just a few exceptions. According to an internal report compiled by the Department of Foreign Affairs last year, Ireland risks becoming “significantly under-represented at all levels” as nearly one-third of Irish officials working in the Commission are poised to retire in the next four years.
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The Government has sought to address this, launching a strategy aimed at encouraging Irish people to apply for Commission jobs. According to figures released last month, 1,700 Irish people applied for 1,500 Commission posts as part of the latest recruitment competition.
But it will take years for this policy to bear fruit and in the meantime, the EU must address crises in economic competitiveness, security and defence among other areas. Decisions will be made with far-reaching implications for Ireland, driven in large part by a public service where Irish influence has waned significantly. This puts all the more pressure on Irish governments to make the right calls as big policy questions, many left unanswered for many years, come into the spotlight.
