David O’ Sullivan versus Goliath: An American dream

After five years as the EU’s top bureaucrat, David O’Sullivan is now its US ambassador, says Europe Correspondent, Ann Cahill

HE likes Joni Mitchell and smiled wide with pride when his daughter sang for the Belgian TV edition of The Voice. So he is not the prototypical Brussels bureaucrat, or an EU ambassador.

But David O’Sullivan has no problem confounding preconceived ideas about what EU-nerds are like — or Irish citizens either — with his command of French, German, Spanish, and Japanese.