Books about Europe appear every week, but few are written by someone who is currently experiencing the European institutions from within. Rudy was my chief of staff during my presidency of the European Economic and Social Committee. He was Special Adviser to the Presidency of the European Council and held various positions at the European Commission. And in all of these functions, he acted more as an entrepreneur than as a civil servant.

Moreover, Rudy also knows Europe from the point of view of the Member States, as well as from that of the regions. He was in fact chief of staff in his own country, Belgium, at both regional and federal level. He was thus private secretary on the three levels, a unique achievement worthy of an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

These multiple experiences are reflected in his book. We feel his passion for Europe. But also, we feel the desire for Europe to move forward. Instead of complaining about the crises that Europe is going through and has been through, the author argues that Europe is able to overcome these crises, and more importantly, to take advantage of them to progress and develop. He therefore calls for the COVID crisis not to be wasted, but to be used as a lever for the further integration of Europe.

However, the author is not a blind ‘Euro-lover’ who would like everything to be done at European level. He points out the danger, as also shown by Max Weber, that the formalism of bureaucracy can lead to cumbersome and rigid administrative procedures, even to a monopolization of power in favour of the bureaucrats’ interests. Bureaucracy is indeed a system that provokes resistance to change, a system that revolves around itself and loses its link with the outside world. The bubble of the Schuman roundabout, as the author calls it, is one of the main issues explaining the disassociation with the European citizen.

But this bureaucratic mechanism failed to extinguish the flame of the European dream for the author, a passion that keeps him looking at solutions instead of problems. This is what I admire most about him: a pragmatic spirit coupled with an unrelenting optimism. And since the author uses anecdotes in his book, allow me to do the same.