Life of a European Mandarin: Inside the Commission

Subjects:
EU Law

ISBN13: 9789020970227
ISBN: 9020970224
Published: August 2007
Publisher: Editions Lannoo sa
Country of Publication: Belgium
Binding: Paperback
Price: £17.50

For more than seven years, Derk-Jan Eppink worked as a senior official behind the scenes in the European Commission. The Commission is not well-known to the general public, but makes decisions which affect the daily lives of almost half a billion Europeans. Now that he has left the Commission to take up a new job in New York, Eppink looks back on his time in Europe.

Eppink's book gives the reader a rare and ironic glimpse of life in Europe's corridors of power. In his inimitable style, he sketches a portrait of the 'European Mandarins', the European Commission's senior administrators, of whom a German Euro-Commissioner recently said 'they have too much power and are too little controlled'.