In a small city in Belgium, inland from the famous port of Zeebrugge, sits the principal campus of The College of Europe. Unlike its city, Bruges or Brügge, which is best known for its canals or as the Gothic backdrop to the 2008 Brendan Gleeson film ‘In Bruges’, the university itself is relatively unknown to the public. Nonetheless, The College of Europe, or as it is known within the European bubble, simply ‘The College’, plays a principal role in the lifecycle of a European civil servant.
Founded by early European Movement leaders, Paul-Henri Spaak and Winston Churchill as an aid to post-war European reconstruction, the College is today the most successful university in placing budding bureaucrats at the top of European institutions. Its high-flying alumni include Finnish president Alexander Stubb, the EU’s Brexit Tsar Sabine Weyand, and deputy PM turned PR-man Nick Clegg. This success, however, results from the special relationship between the college and the EU Commission. Half of the university’s funding comes directly from the EU budget and the College’s administrative council is largely staffed with current and retired EU officials.
In return the College offers six master’s degrees; filling the EU’s administrative needs for lawyers, economists, parliamentarians and diplomats. This includes the elusive Masters in Transatlantic Affairs graduate – a specialised diplomacy course designed to train Europe’s Mid-Atlantic Trump/Biden whisperers.
Europe’s fast-track
As its tagline boasts, the College sees itself as the “Laboratory of the European Renaissance”. Indeed, each major phase of EU expansion was preceded by the growth of the College. As well as its campuses in Bruges and Natolin, Poland, the college this year signalled its commitment to Balkan expansion by opening a new campus in Tirana, Albania. The college is also the forum where EU history is made. Margaret Thatcher’s famous ‘Bruges speech’, calling for a non-federalized economic union of sovereign states, was actually the opening address to the College’s 1988/89 cohort. Her speech took main aim at Jacques Delors’ federalist administration, who this year has been honoured as the ‘Patron de Promotion’, or academic figurehead of the college.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thatcher is yet to be invoked as the inspiration for the College’s future Eurocrats.
Each year the College hosts 400 students, about 10-25 per large EU state, drawn from roughly 55 countries. The typical student holds somewhere between one and three degrees from their nation’s top universities, must be bilingual English and French speakers, and is on average 26 years old. Similarly to the UK’s Fast Track scheme, the close-knit esprit de corps, formed among the College’s students leads its graduates within European Institutions to be termed ‘the College Mafia’.
A very British selection process
But initiation into ‘the College Mafia’ is not something one just falls into, by keeping bad company. Potential students are treated to a rigorous set of interviews with their national selection committees. I was fortunate to secure an interview for the UK. However, what I did not expect was an invite to the Foreign Office in London. As a state-schooled Edinburgh boy the prospect of being interviewed at the heart of a Victorian monolith to a departed imperial grandeur was a unique stressor.
Even the Foreign Offices’ internal architecture appears designed to be off-putting to the uninitiated. As a particularly broad-shouldered Scot, I kept getting trapped in the repeated sets of purposely narrow double doors leading to my interview room. My civil service minder keenly explained that the marble heads staring down at visitors in the central courtyard were of the various historical colonial governors of the Indian provinces. The whole Foreign Office experience reminded me of a phrase from the 20th century American Financier Willard Straight, “the British idea of Cooperation is making the other fellow do what the Britisher wants him to do”.
But despite the imperial pomp, the interview was on a more even keel. The jury was equally comprised of British and College of Europe academics. I received a bilingual grilling about everything from European fiscal rules, developing trade patterns, and the European response to the Ukraine war. I believe I must have somewhat held my own as I was knocked out to find I was accepted onto a place within the MSc in European Economics programme.
Scholarships, Scotland, and the College
However, obtaining a space is only step one for a prospective student. The cost of the College’s tuition and board still runs at about €29k (£25k), putting it out of reach of most private funded students and certainly my own means. Instead, most of the students’ places are at least partially funded by their national governments. In Scotland we are fortunate that the Scottish Government funds three full scholarships to the College. I was lucky to be a recipient of one of these three places.
It may initially appear strange that the main destination of the Scottish Government’s humanities funding for post-graduates is in Belgium. But by historical standards, this is a natural placement. The link with Bruges itself precedes the Acts of Union. Verversdijk, one part of the College’s Bruges campus, was named after the merchant dyers that traded in Scottish wool. Indeed, Scottish Academia was ‘European’ before it was ever ‘British’. The strength of Scotland’s intellect since medieval times has been lauded on the continent and eleven Scottish rectors have headed up La Sorbonne. It is the constant renewal of these ancient links that make Scotland a European nation.
Nonetheless, the Scottish Government scholarships to the College are often left unused. Though a lack of interest or language skills could be to blame for too few Scots applying, or making it through the interviews, personally I feel that the reclused Whitehall process may discourage Scottish candidates. Certainly, more needs to be done to encourage Scottish graduates. Perhaps the European Movement in Scotland, like its sister organisation in Ireland, should play a role within the College’s British selection jury.
My own decision to apply to the College of Europe was always straightforward. I am a proud European, a Scot, and invested in the success of the European project. The everyday abominations of eight years of Brexiteer mal-governance have left Britain a Toom Tabard on the world stage. My prevailing feeling, and a view I suggest is shared by the Scottish Government, is that our colleagues on the continent are the only ‘adults left in the room’ and that there are valuable lessons to be learnt from European administration. In my year at the College, I hope that I can help rebuild Europe’s trust in Britons, and, to borrow a phrase from another College of Europe student, Alyn Smith, help to ‘leave a light on for Scotland’ in Bruges.
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