EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Lecture by Ms Cecile Verkleij

By Mine Özdemir

After out visit to Strasbourg and Luxembourg, our trip continued in Brussels. On Thursday April 27^th, the 5^th day of our RIO-trip, we visited the European Commission. During the bus trip from the youth hostel to the Commission we were able to see a lot of interesting buildings in Brussels.

Our day at the Commission was well-planned and we had a busy and interesting programme. The hostess of the Commission met us at the entrance hall and guided us to a committee room where we were had three presentations. The subjects of these presentations were the different policy areas of the Commission, but the main theme was security.

The first speaker of the morning was Ms Cecile Verkleij, from the Directorate-General for Justice and Home Affairs, who spoke to us about economic security and the internal market. Afterwards, we heard presentations by Mr D. de Temmerman and Mr P. Nagy. They told us more about internal security and European neighbourhood policy. It was nice to hear that Mr Nagy was a student of the University of Leiden and he also participated on a RIO-trip during his study.

The internal market is the most powerful tool for job security. Since 1992 the internal market created 2,5 million jobs, but we were told that it could do better. We talked about services of general interest (such as healthcare and education) and about services of general economical interest. A lot of questions were asked about this topic and we got clear answers. Ms Verkleij told us about the problems of social dumping and Polish construction workers, which is a hot topic in Holland right now. We were also told that we visited the Commission at a very special day, because on April 27^th the screening exercise relating to the Membership application of Turkey took place.

Overall, our day at the European commission was very informative and interesting. The atmosphere was informal, the presentation of Ms Verkleij was very informative and she gave clear answers to the questions we had. We read and learn about these organisations through our books, so it is very eye-opening to visit one of these organisation and hear about it from experts. We also got a lot of brochures and information about the European Commission, which is of course very useful for us as students. We all enjoyed our visit to the Commission very much.

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