Equality and freedom

In our societies, a lot of emphasis is place on equality. Even without making the difference between equality of opportunities or equality of results and outcomes. It’s just a repeated reference to equality, as a banner. And politics is then compelled to give a lot of attention to the matter, very often without a proper debate of the issue, which is more complex than it looks.

I have also worked in places where people are just struggling daily. They might think about equality as well. But their main demand is about freedom and basic rights. In other places, it is also about space to act without too many administrative constraints and much less bureaucratic interference.

We seem to have lost sight of the aspirations of such peoples. It is not a balanced view of the world.

Long weekends at the EU institutions

The EU staff in Brussels did not like my post of yesterday. I advised them to read it again. It is more favourable to them than many other statements we kept hearing throughout the day. Yes, they had again a lot of bad press today, in many corners of Europe.

And I also gave them another piece of advice, gently: please be in the office as scheduled, show you respect the working hours.

The point is that the EU bureaucrats have to move away from the habit of very long weekends. It is quite common to see most of the offices empty by Friday 11:00 am. And if one goes there and walks the buildings on a Monday morning, one notes that many staff are still out. They might be about to arrive at Brussels airport by late morning.

Actually, one gets the impression that there is little work discipline in many of the EU institutions. And the performance measurement mechanisms seem to be lacking. The bosses do not appear to be in charge.

Isn’t it time to start looking at these matters?

Having said that, there are people that work pretty hard. Not everyone is a “professional weekender”.