Whiff of Mao as 1,200 EU staff told ‘muck in’ – down on the farm
by David Gow in Brussels
Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU agriculture commissioner, is now a self-avowed Maoist: she has come up with a scheme to send her 1,200 officials down on the farm for a spot of “harvest experience”, a plan reminiscent of Chinese students’ obligations during the 60s cultural revolution of Chairman Mao.
Boel, who owns three farms in her native Denmark with her husband, said that a bout of “mucking out the pigs” would be good hands-on training for eurocrats dealing with the minutiae of the common agricultural policy.
Her idea, presented this week to commissioners, including the ex-Maoist commission president, José Manuel Barroso, has set emails humming throughout the Berlaymont building in Brussels. The buzz among the commission’s 33,600 staff is of how they can get in on the act and escape the empty, echoing corridors of HQ.
Other departments are already discussing copycat schemes, perhaps with tongue slightly in cheek. Officials in the justice directorate-generate might not be enthusiastic about spending a couple of weeks as a prison guard, but fisheries functionaries could find a spell on a trawler a change of scene.
Boel, a centre-right politician back home, said of her scheme: “What better way to ensure that the people managing farm policy are sensitive to the needs of the farmers?”
Her aides, many of them brought up on farms themselves, said that the scheme was just at the planning stage – and it would be entirely voluntary.
1 response so far ↓
wil // March 23, 2009 at 3:36 pm
“and it would be entirely voluntary.”
I don’t care about EU bureaucrats, but seems to be setting the stage for the rest of the populations, like the recent House approval of civilian security volunteer service bullshit here.