David O’ Sullivan versus Goliath: An American dream
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.
Having spent five years working as the European Commission’s head bureaucrat, orchestrating much of the institution’s agenda and drive, he did not sail off into the sunset when his term came to an end in 2005.
Instead he moved — what would be considered a step down on the career ladder — to head up the department of trade when the commissioner in charge of that policy was the controversial British Labour stalwart, Peter Mandelson.
He followed this up with a move into the diplomatic world as number two in the EU’s fledging, reborn, foreign affairs body, the European External Action Service.
And now, at the end of his five years there, aged 61, he is making what is likely to be his final public service career move, to become the EU’s ambassador to Washington.
It’s not an easy posting, moving to a place where the public perception is that Europe is a country rather than a continent, where not having a dictator-like single person at the end of a phone to speak for all, is seen as a failure, and where they believe the EU system is more complicated than their own labyrinthine one.
“We are not a state nor an international organisation, we are a hybrid which for people who think in very straightforward terms means the EU does not fit into the mould,” he says.
So would it be better if he were a politician, better able to smoothe away the complex details and concentrate on the power plays? He agrees that John Bruton, the former taoiseach, set the bar high during his term in Washington for the EU. “It’s not a political job but you need political instincts,” he says.
A Dubliner and civil servant all his life, he looked for the job. Relations with the US are really important for the EU — and he knows the US.
Like many Irish families, his mother’s family emigrated there and he lived and studied and spent time working and travelling there when he was younger.
“I have always been fascinated with the US and combining all my EU career with the US was an irresistible magnet to take this job”, he says.
In many ways, it is an impossible job — though, this is not something Mr O’Sullivan would say. His title is head of the EU delegation which represents the EU collectively, but the EU is not distinct from its member states — it is not the 29th country, so he must also represent the member states and the EU institutions.
He will work on behalf of the new foreign minister, Federico Mogerini, on behalf of Donald Tusk, who will head up the council which is the member states, and the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, and the keeper of the purse strings, the European Parliament.
“So it’s a bit of everything — the key is to focus on the EU as a whole… I think the US understands the benefits of dealing with the EU as a whole rather than the member states on their own. But I am under no illusion. They [the member states] will all have their own special privileged relationship with the EU, and my task is to build on that and create the European dimension,” he says.
There is little straightforward about the EU’s relationship with the US, however.
Sometimes, the EU sees its role as standing shoulder to shoulder with the US, and sometimes the EU is split as some countries pursue their own domestic advantage — and at other times, where European values may not align with what the US wants.
There is also the issue of broken trust, as with the US surveillance of EU leaders’ phones. This has been “very damaging in the eyes of public opinion and created an unhelpful climate”.
But US president Barack Obama’s response, including giving EU citizens the same redress as US citizens, goes a long way to remove the concerns, he said.
He believes it is necessary to grow the relationship through not just the big-ticket issues such as TTIP (the transatlantic trade and investment partnership), the controversial EU-US trade deal, or sanctions against Russia, but through co-operation on science and research, education, and people-to-people contacts. Europeans can have their own misconceptions about the US and see it as a monolith.
“When you have travelled from the east to the west and from Canada to Mexico, as I have, you see it is a very diverse place and people have a strong local dimension,” he says.
Federating all the 28 EU countries’ embassies to the US, together with the EU’s office network in Congress and the other US institutions gives a very large pool of information that can be distilled into useable analysis. Being Irish in a country where millions claim Irish heritage is useful, Mr O’Sullivan agrees, but, “at the end of the day, it’s a place where people judge you by your effectiveness and what you bring to the table”.
While he will not be directly involved in the TTIP talks, he will have much to contribute, not least his experience in two contentious areas — food and the investor-state settlement mechanism that allows companies go outside the national courts and law to a commercial international tribunal when they feel a country’s laws discriminate against them.
He helped negotiate a deal on the hormone beef issue with the US when it threatened sanctions against the EU’s refusal to allow its beef imports. The agreement was to take non-hormone beef.
EU negotiators have been accused of being too willing to make concessions to the US. “The American negotiators are very tough, but we defend our interests and we try to strike a good deal,” he says, adding that in the end, both sides have to sell whatever they agree to their constituents.
Many fear that concessions will be made in one sector to make gains for another, such as conceding more on agriculture in exchange for greater trade in other areas. “Both the EU and the US will have to look at it in the round,” he says.
An economics and sociology graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he began his career in the Irish civil service and moved to the European Commission 35 years ago where one of his first postings was to Japan. He was a member of the cabinet of two Irish Commissioners — Peter Sutherland and Pádraig Flynn — and of Commission President Romano Prodi.
