29/07/2011
To organise in the Brussels seat of the European Council and the Council 6,500 meetings and several summits per year is a bit like running a small town, explains William Shapcott, the Director-General for Personnel and Administration at the General Secretariat of the Council.
Mr Shapcott, what has been the impact of the Treaty of Lisbon on the work of your Directorate-General for Personnel and Administration which is a core support structure and service provider in the General Secretariat of the Council?
The impact has been quite substantial. The Lisbon Treaty established the European Council as an institution in itself, together with the post its permanent President. It created a European External Action Service to better represent the Union in international affairs and it changed the way that legislation is made in the Union, with a greater sharing of decision making powers between the Council and the European Parliament. All of these big institutional questions, designed to make the Union more efficient and effective, have big practical consequences. In the past, this might have implied new jobs and new people, but today's financial circumstances, there isn't any new money to do this, so we have to reorganise and reprioritise and find more efficient working methods.
In the Justus Lipsius building, the seat of the European Council and the Council, 6,500 meetings and several summits are organised per year. What logistic work is behind?
It is an enormous logistical effort, a bit like running a small town. Some of these meetings are very high-level - for example, the Heads of State and Government of the 27 Member States meet here at least four times a year. Others are very large, for example when there is a summit linking European Ministers with Ministers from the 79 members of the African Caribbean and Pacific States. And there are many meetings at working level, with regular officials from Member State governments or their representations in Brussels. They are here to discuss and decide on EU action and legislation. For that they need the right documents, the right legal support, the right meeting conditions, interpretation, food, the right environment and they need to be safe. It is a big exercise: for example, our canteens and restaurants serve over 2 million meals a year. As well as organising the logistics, we want to do so in an environmentally friendly way. So there are tons of items to be recycled, our building is covered with solar panels, making us the biggest producer of solar power in the Brussels area and we are building a co-generation facility to generate cheaper and more environmentally friendly heat and power.
People are not aware that there are 23 official languages used in the Council. To translate all official documents and to guarantee a high-level interpretation is an enormous task. Can you tell more about it?
We have to worry about three main language issues. We have to make sure that the delegates can understand each other. For most meetings, this means interpreters are needed. They are organised by a part of the Commission, with the Council being the biggest customer. We also have to make sure that the delegates can understand the documents they are working on, such as a piece of draft legislation. There is a rule that no draft legislation for a Council, where the ministers from the Member States meet and decide, can be agreed unless each minister has the text in his own language, however well he or she might understand one of the more common languages, such as English or French. This means rapid high quality translation is needed. A third team, of lawyer linguists, check very carefully that the right legal terms are used in every language. This exercise isn't just about equipping delegates to understand what they are deciding, but also to make sure citizens can follow the process and that the legislation is well done and will actually be understood and work properly when it gets to the Member States.