Today we got the opportunity to visit the beautiful cities of Ghent and Bruges. I felt like I was in a time machine that would at times take me to the beautiful treasures of the past and at other times transport me to a beautiful modernized world. Both the cities were really compact and authentic where the past and present could co-exist in a perfect balance. Walking through the city, you turn the corner and just like that, you go from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first.

Our day started off with a great orientation about the College of Europe. That was our first destination at Bruges. The college of Europe is an independent university institute of postgraduate European studies with the main campus in Bruges, Belgium. Founded in 1949, it promotes “a spirit of solidarity and mutual understanding between all the nations of Western Europe and provides elite training to individuals who will uphold these values”. It has approximately 420 postgraduates from over 50 countries and even though it’s situated in the Flemish region of Belgium, a Dutch-speaking area, the college does not use Dutch as one of it’s working languages. We learned about the ERASMUS student network during our lectures but actually learned how beneficial that network is from an ex-student who was giving us the introduction to the course. He was from France and he told us about the great scholarship opportunity he received at the college of Europe due to the network. Right after his informative orientation we prepared ourselves to take Dr. Birchfield’s class’s exam. The exam was actually not that stressful as we were taking the exam in such a calm environment.

Right after our exam we went for a canal tour, that was probably the best tour of the city we could have gotten in the limited time we had left in Bruges. It was interesting learning about the history of this place and getting the chance to see all the fabulous Flemish art and architecture, works of art and structures. The picture on the left is of the bell tower in Bruges. It’s importance was that it regulated the lives of the city dwellers, announcing the time, fire alarms, work hours, and a variety of social, political, and religious events. It is one
of the city’s most prominent symbols; the bell tower formerly housed a treasury and the municipal archives, and served as an observation post for spotting fires and other danger. Similar to this during our walking tour in Ghent we learned that the belfry is a proud symbol of Ghent’s independence. On top of the 95-metre tower the dragon has been watching over the city since 1380. (The dragon never sleeps, so no better animal to have as your guardian) The city’s festivities are still announced by extraordinary carillon concerts. It’s interesting to see the similarities between Bruges and Ghent’s histories but also important to note how history sometimes tells us a beautiful story. If we think about it most of Belgium is flat land so that actually gave both the French and Germans (specially Hitler) the incentive to fight on Belgian land instead of their own land. So in a way to protect their lands, Belgians had many of these tall towers to spot danger. Also another common story that our respective tour guides shared with us was about beer. People who lived in Bruges would drink beer from a young age, as it was really cheap, pepper was more expensive. While people who lived in Ghent would allow their children to drink beer from the age of 6 when they started getting their adult teeth. Again it’s interesting to see that history has played a role to define how alcohol is perceived in Europe today. Due to the acceptance of beer since so many years, today many places in Europe have an open container policy and it isn’t looked down upon when you buy beer. Comparing this to the States, we all know how people look down upon you when you buy alcohol or even cigarettes. Basically whether you realize it or not history plays a key role in determining values today. One piece of work I couldn’t go without talking about is the ‘The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’. It’s without a doubt the world’s most besieged and coveted artwork. The Van Eyck brothers painted this unique altarpiece in 1432. It is the highlight of the Flemish Primitives. It’s just unbelievable that so many years ago people could be masters of the oil medium and use it so splendidly to portray a robust and realistically detailed vision of the world  around them.

Finally we got back home and I think this blog wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t talk about the Euros. It is the most anticipated event in Europe this summer. Every country is looking to win the euro and secure their dominance through the game of football. The picture below is of the opening ceremony of the tournament. The game is played with a lot of grace and respect however it saddens me that people would turn it into a violent act off the pitch. The fight between the English fans and the Russian fans just isn’t hooliganism. It’s extremely political! I’m happy that UEFA has taken measures to prevent alcohol near the stadiums and threatened to disqualify both the teams incase of any future acts of hooliganism by any of the teams or fans. The game should be played the way it is supposed to be played with elegance and mutual respect amongst teams and fans.

Visiting Bruges and Ghent and not to forget our time in Brussels has been just perfect! I look forward to our 10-day visit to Scandinavia and hope to learn much more about European integration and European history.

Today, we had the opportunity to interact with representatives of the Secretariat of the Council of the European Union for the first time. We got to listen to briefings in the Justus Lipsius building in one of the 19 nearly-identical meeting rooms around the main atrium where members of the European Council, Council of the EU, European Commission and other lower level bodies hold more than 6430 meetings per year. The places where we sat around the table were labeled with the names of all 28 member states in order of rotating presidency and even though there was no official business going on, it felt marvelous to be in the place where so many important and impactful decisions are taken.

One important thing that we learned is that the Secretariat of the Council is one of the only constant bodies of the institution and it provides for continuity, memory, and structure to the council. This is because there are no fixed members in the Council of the EU. The presidency of the Council is assumed by a country, not an individual, and rotates every six months. Even then, all meetings are not chaired by the same person. Whoever chairs the meetings depends on which one of the ten Council configurations is in session at the time. Each configuration corresponds to the policy area currently being discussed and therefore each country sends the relevant minister responsible for that policy area at the time, this also includes the presidency. The only Council configuration that has a permanent chairperson is the Foreign Affairs Council. This spot is held by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. This was partly due to Henry Kissinger and his famous “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?” question that in a way forced the EU to become more cohesive. All of this, in my opinion, makes this institution probably one of the most intricate and fast changing institutions in the EU and having this demystified during our first briefing was tremendously helpful.

After this, we talked about some interesting issues that make decision making within the Council unnecessarily intricate at times. The one that stood to me the most was something that I had not really put much thought into which is the language barrier between most member states. There are 24 official languages in the EU and most documents as well as conversations are translated into all of them. One may argue that there are professional translators that abstract this complexity away. However, what about the cases when the translators make a mistake? or when nuances in meaning due to dialects or regional factors exist? or when simply because of culture, things that are correctly translated just do not convey the intended message? This is something that the representative mentioned sometimes prolongs meetings or causes revisions. One of the cases of meaning lost in translation that the representative pointed out has happened multiple times was resettlement vs. relocation. These are similar words that even in the same language can be tricky if you have not thought about it before and have caused significant discontent in the past.

The complex relationship between the EU and Russia was next on the agenda. Following the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, there were sanctions imposed to exert pressure on Russia to negotiate for a solution on what, to this date, is still considered by the international community as a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty by the Russian government. However, the EU is dependent on Russia in many aspects and vice versa. Some countries in the EU have a nearly 100% energy dependency on Russia and overall the EU is estimated to depend on them for about 30% of their total energy needs. Also, Russia is the 3^rd trading partner of the EU and the EU is the 1^st trading partner of Russia. Therefore, we learned that these sanctions imposed on Russia due to the Crimean crisis were not meant to punish Russia or make them suffer because then they could punish back and hurt the EU just as much. Instead, these sanctions were meant to be used as a tool to encourage a change in behavior. This is something that struck me as ineffective to say the least and as a way of just showing the EU population, which might not be educated on all the aforementioned facts, that something is being done but without actually doing something that would upset the relationship significantly, like battle groups.

Now that we are almost a month into our trip to the EU, I would also like to take this opportunity to reflect upon what I think are things that usually fly under the radar but could be detrimental in the long run, which is misinformation. During our trip to the NATO headquarters a couple weeks ago, one of our briefers said a couple of things that struck me as inaccurate because they happened to fall inside my area of interest. The first thing was that cryptocurrencies are easy to track and the second thing was that encryption (AES256 specifically) can and has been broken relatively easily. After doing some double checking I corroborated that even though cryptocurrencies are traceable by default, there are methods that can be used to make it very difficult or nearly impossible to trace. The same goes for encryption. Even though theoretically encryption can be broken, it would take about 9.18*10⁵⁰ years on average to break AES256 using one million very powerful computers simultaneously. To put that into perspective, the universe is thought to have formed 1.4*10¹⁰ years ago. So even though he was partially right on both questions, this was a reminder that we always need to have a questioning attitude and not assume things are true because simply because they come from a seemingly reputable source.

Today we met with Johnny Jones, a U.S. foreign service officer currently stationed at the U.S. embassy in Paris, France. He came to have waffles with us in Grand Place. He also happened to be a graduate of the Nunn School, before attending Georgia State Law School and the foreign service thereafter! It was extremely interesting learning about his career trajectory, from his initial decision to be posted in the Middle East, to actually living and working in Islamabad and Cairo, where he was present during the start of the Arab Spring. After deciding he wanted to take an 8-month-intensive course in French, he arrived at “the place where everyone in the foreign service wants to go,” Paris.

Maison Dandoy in Grand Place, where we had waffles with Mr. Jones

I asked him what it was like to be at the embassy during the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015. He said that as soon as reports started coming in of the attacks, the atmosphere got very stressful. He and the other embassy employees worked in rounds to keep writing up and sending in reports of the events back to the U.S., as well as keep track of the U.S. citizens in Paris at the time. He pointed out that it was very difficult to track the attacker as well as other terrorists for several reasons: First of all, the Schengen area treaty makes it extremely easy for citizens and residents of member countries to travel from country to country in Europe; i.e. the attacker fled from France to Belgium with relative ease. Second of all, because terrorists are starting to become more and more people who are French or E.U. citizens, it is harder to track them, infringe on their citizenship rights, and keep constant surveillance. Moreover, a typical “radicalization” path leads these citizens to “go on vacation” to Turkey and then go to an ISIS or other terrorist group’s camp somewhere like Yemen in order to receive training. Then, the terrorist will return and carry out an attack in his home country, which he knows well and is less likely to make a mistake that will lead him to get caught.

The irony of the situation was fascinating to me: something that has contributed so much to the European project, the Schengen area, has posed a significant problem for European security. NATO has done its job in terms of protecting the EU from external threats, but I think the EU and especially the CFSP needs to take a bigger role in terms of inter-European security.  There’s already been a lot of progress in terms of information sharing among governments, but Europe doesn’t have border checks along each border road like the U.S. does. There is also the problem of integration and French culture, which is not the most inclusive of European cultures, according to Mr. Jones. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being proud of strongly held cultural practices, but sometimes it can lead to a significant lack of integration with immigrant populations. These poorly integrated immigrant populations can then become hotbeds for extremism. This is something that I’ve also observed in Brussels. The neighborhood Molenbeek, with a predominantly immigrant population, looks more like a Moroccan city than a part of Belgium, from the languages spoken to the isolation of the community.

Overall, I really enjoyed meeting up with Johnny Jones and seeing how he went from a Yellow Jacket to a diplomat. He encouraged us to keep being well-read on European issues and to get involved in INTA-related organizations at school if we wanted to prepare ourselves for a career like his.

After we got back to our host families’ apartments, our bellies full of waffles and icecream, I had a chance to reflect on my experience during the three-day long weekend. For 8.50 euros, I bought a round-trip train ticket to Antwerp, a port city north of Brussels. The city is famous for its diamonds, train station, and Het Steen, a medieval fortress right on the banks of the Scheldt river. I walked through the city’s large shopping district, to Grote Market, and then finally to the newly created MAS (Museum aan de Stroom), which offers panoramic views of the city. The “oldness” of everything in Europe never ceases to amaze me—I had coffee in a room built in the early 1500s! Whereas Americans tend to have little historical “memory” in dealing with situations (partly because the U.S. is much younger than France or Germany), I’ve realized that it’s important to take the long-held traditions and deeply-held values that EU citizens hold into account when determining how to balance sovereignty vs. security within the region.

Antwerp train station