Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of Eshab magazine. Go to eshav.com.E.U. for free access to all our

podcasts to date. This is Paul Adamson. I'm in conversation with Robert Madeline. Robert Madeline is a former

Director General in the European

Commission, many years standing, most recently in the area of technology, as Director General

DG Connect. And this is part of an occasional series of what has the UK ever done for the European

Union. So Robert, you, unlike many of your colleagues, your peers and from the British Civil

Service, you actually went to the European and from the British Civil Service, you actually

went to the European Commission from the British Civil Service, having spent 10 years in Whitehall

and five years or so in the UK permanent representation. So you had a, you have a different

maybe reference point. So how was it for you when you joined the Commission, having had this

quite long career already in Whitehall? What first thing struck you about being a civil servant in the European institutions

as opposed to the UK civil service?

So I think the first and most visible difference was the existence of the political staff

of the cabinet system, which I had seen in France when I was there detached to the French civil service for a sabbatical year,

but which at the time in London was completely heretical.

Now with the spad system, probably everybody does much the same thing.

The second difference, I think, was the difference between the oral and written

command. In Whitehall, if you picked up the phone, it was just for a chat, and when you knew what

you wanted, you wrote it down. Whereas in the commission, working in a commissioner's staff,

when you wrote it down, people assumed you were just putting it on the record, and it was

only when you phoned up that they took it seriously. So you were just putting it on the record and it was only

when you phoned up that they took it seriously so you went across the Commission

...