Odds are on Verrue

Date: 05/10/1995

ROBERT Verrue, a 47-year-old career fonctionnaire, is the favourite to take over as the new head of DGXIII, the Directorate-General for telecommunications, following the retirement of Michel Carpentier.

No formal decision has yet been taken, but Verrue is expected to move from his job as deputy director-general in DGI, the Directorate-General for external economic relations, on 1 November.

“He's a hard-working, efficient and hard-nosed French administrator,” says a Commission official. “He embodies the best of the French civil service: efficiency combined with a lack of bias.”

Known as a workaholic who once complained he had 250 days of unused holiday, Verrue is moving into a job where most of his colleagues are 55 or over while his contemporaries tend to be several staff grades lower.

Verrue joined DGII, the Directorate-General for economic affairs, in 1973 as an administrator. Talent-spotted by Commission Vice-President François-Xavier Ortoli in 1981, he moved to his Cabinet as adviser on economic affairs and the restructuring of the steel industry. When Ortoli left in 1985, Verrue moved to head of unit in DGII. In 1988, he moved to the internal market Directorate-General as a director with responsibility for negotiating the voluntary car export restraint agreement with Japan.

External Economic Relations Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan sought out Verrue in 1993, placing him in DGI to bring some order to the chaotic administration of the PHARE and TACIS aid programmes for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. These programmes, accounting for 6 billion ecu of EU money, had until then been notoriously badly run.