To tell the truth, we see this affair less as proof of corruption in Brussels than as a sign that ‘Brussels’ has entered the terminal crisis of Western governance, with judges taking power. In the governance system that preceded ‘New Public Management’, that complicated system invented by Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister (1997-2007), who would have been surprised to see the College of Bruges, a breeding ground for European civil servants, awarded a training programme for apprentice diplomats in Europe? But we live in a world where civil servants are appointed to organise a staged competition so that . . .

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