EUoplocephalus

16:01, 26 April 2010

As an ‘ancien’ of the College of Europe in Bruges, it has been instructive and amusing to see the British media whip itself up into a tizz in recent days about the College, following the surge in polls for the Liberal Democrats, whose leader Nick Clegg was there a few years before myself.

Thus we have the Daily Mail Synon blog remind its readers that “The college is where they take in wanna-be eurocrats and put them through a kind of ideological kidney dialysis. They pump all their national blood out, cleanse it of national sentiments, and pump it back in filled with pure EU nationalism (‘Europe is my country’).” 

Tony Barber in the FT wrote “Clegg studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, an institution geared to producing graduates with enthusiasm for EU integration. He speaks Dutch, French, German and Spanish, making him as proficient a linguist as such dedicated Europeans as Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s full-time president.” 

The ever-measured Dan Hannan noted that “Nick Clegg is recognised by Eurocrats as One Of Us. A graduate of the College of Europe in Bruges, he went on to work in the European Commission before being elected to the European Parliament. In each of those three institutions, he was taught the them-and-us elitism that is the hallmark of the Eurocrat: the belief that voters are simple, often bigoted, souls, who require guidance from experts.”

This is all something of a surprise to me and makes me wonder whether there are perhaps two Colleges of Europe in Bruges, vast metropole that it is.

My time at the College in the mid-1990s was characterised not by any indoctrination, but by a rather conventional Masters programme, with added Belgian beer.  The closest anyone got to promoting Europe was standing up for the Ode to Joy now and again at official events, but I fail to see how that translates into a love for the EU or a dislike for one’s own country.

“Ah, the thin end of the wedge”, they cry! Hardly.  The students who attend the College are all academically very able and part of that is having one’s own mind: In the years I studied and worked there, I never once encountered a person who was out to “build Europe” nor anyone whose views on European integration were majorly changed by the experience.  Those who attend the College are a self-selecting group, so if they are pro-European, then that would predate the College and any “ideological dialysis”.  My own experience and improved knowledge made me more aware of the complexity of the EU and the ways in which it could adversely affect people, hence a decade’s work since researching euroscepticism (something I study not to help destroy it, but to understand it, because it is an important phenomenon).

The College is not an ideological institution, much less somewhere that turns out Euro-federalists, hell-bent on crushing those who dare stand in the way of the EU. Its USP is that it gives people a chance to meet others from many different countries (and not just European ones) and see that they have some things in common, but as a good German friend of mine noted “at the College you spend six months breaking down your stereotypes of other nationalities, then six months putting them all back in place.”

Then again, I don’t speak Spanish and I don’t the words to “Ode to Joy”, so that must be what’s holding me back…