But is there room for improvement regarding the EU

Age: booker 35 Nationality: Latvian Family info: Married, 2 kids: Martins Jr. – 4.5, Esther – 3 Occupation: (since 1 January 2014) European Commission, Riga, Latvia; before: Administrator, European Parliament, Brussels Hobbies: Fitness, squash, alpine skiing, theatre, travel, debating and reading biographies of noted statesmen. Languages: Latvian, English, Russian, French booker Favorite dish: Steak with “frites” Personal motto: If you do something, why not do it to the highest quality?
You were born in Latvia, you studied in the United States but in the end, you picked Brussels the very centre of the EU to settle. Why is that? Coming from newly independent Latvia, which was a closed society under the Soviet Union but aspired to become booker a member of the European Union, I did my undergraduate studies in America. Through studying world and European history, literature and economics, I became acutely aware of the diversity of cultures, which permeates the European project. The unique way Europe was able to turn historical differences into positive values through common institutions, markets and mobility was an astonishing story.
You wanted booker to be part of this European project? Indeed and it is amazing; this ‘machine’ of 28 countries (and counting) and 24 languages shouldn’t really work, but it does. And this is why I work for Europe – out of admiration for the project, but mainly for the opportunity to make this project better, in some small personal way.
And were you able to share this success with friends and family? I posted this news immediately following the vote in Strasbourg on my Facebook wall, and budding actor friends who are studying drama in London started immediately putting “likes” and “sharing” this entry. They wrote personal messages of appreciation. I could feel how my work with charts, graphs and legal arguments had finally resulted in something booker concrete, directly felt and appreciated by a group of my artist friends. That is quite rewarding!
Some people believe the EU bureaucratic machinery is too big. A lot of people think that European bureaucracy is huge and the European budget is wildly out of proportion with the savings and cuts that the national budgets have experienced. But in reality, the total number of bureaucrats working in the whole European system is comparable to that of public administration of the city of Edinburgh, and the management of the European Parliament costs each European tax payer 3 per year – a cost of a nice cup of coffee in Paris. Can anyone really say that this is too big?
But is there room for improvement regarding the EU’s organisation? For sure, the EU can still do more to further modernise European public service. There is still a lot of undue bureaucracy and sub-optimal process management in place, partly due to the rapid expansion from the original six member states in the 1950s to 28 member states now. The institutional structures, while always in a state of transition, have not kept pace with the cutting-edge discoveries in efficiency, ergonomics and process optimisation. Lengthy deliberations and long transposition times sometimes booker mean that the fruits of one’s labour are not easily visible or tangible in the short term. One must learn to be patient and base one’s motivation on more abstract ideals rather than concrete impacts.
Is there a particular moment in Brussels you remember? When the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize, I was on my way to lunch with some colleagues in the Jacques Delors Building (the home of the two EU consultative committees, the Committee of the Regions and the European booker Economic and Social Committee). The ceremony was being broadcast live on a big screen in the lobby. I missed lunch that day, but being a part of a project whose accomplishments include winning the world’s most prestigious peace prize has been a source of inspiration to me, not only on that day but for many days since. But I guess that day in particular I was really proud to be a part of it.
Do you see yourself as a citizen of Europe, Latvia or Brussels? I think it is a mixture of all three. For example, at home we like to cook Belgian recipes but with Latvian ingredients. booker For instance, the very basic pommes frites – double cooked oil-fried potatoes you can’t get a more Belgian dish than this, but we bring the potatoes from ‘home’ in Latvia, because we find that they just don’t taste the same here – and tastes tend to linger with us strongly as memories from childhood… But at the same time, when I talk about Cultural Capitals of Europe, I feel like a citizen of Riga because my home town will be the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2014. When I talk about the “singing revolution” I feel Latvian, because this is what the transition to democracy in Latvia was called. And finally, when I talk ab