TH E C A RTH US I A N 202 1
INTERVIEW WITH
SIR JONATHAN FAULL KCMG prizes. He played for the 2nd XI Cricket team, was Captain of Daviesites Football team and, on top of all that, found time to perform in several French plays. After leaving Charterhouse, Jonathan studied Law at the University of Sussex and at the University of Geneva, followed by a Master’s degree at the College of Europe in Bruges in European Law. He then took an unusual career path (for that time) by joining the European Commission.
D
uring LQ21 we were lucky enough to meet Sir Jonathan Faull (W71), an Old Carthusian who has been at the centre of European institutions for over 40 years. Sadly, we were not able to meet Jonathan in person because of Covid-19 restrictions, but instead had a long chat with him over Zoom. Jonathan Faull arrived at Charterhouse in 1967 as a Fourth Form Foundation scholar. He was in the original Daviesites boarding House, which he described as an old rundown building on the far side of the Duckites Bridge. At first, he felt a little homesick and found School life challenging, but he soon made lots of friends, with whom he is still in contact. Jonathan studied English, French, and Economics as a Specialist. He still feels grateful to the dedicated teachers at Charterhouse, especially his French beak, Mr Caillot de Chadbannes, who sparked his interest in the language. Jonathan enjoyed a full range of co-curricular activities at Charterhouse – He belonged to the Jazz, Poetry, Essay and Wesley Societies, and he was Secretary of the Debating Society. He won the Thackeray and Ivor Gibson
Jonathan arrived in Brussels in 1978, not expecting to stay for long, but he married there, made new friends and enjoyed being a European civil servant. He started work in the Customs Department as an administrator, a job which he saw as a great opportunity to learn how the Common Market operated. After this, he spent a couple of years as assistant to the Director General for Competition, dealing with mergers, subsidies, agreements, and abusive positions. He enjoyed working on competition issues. He later went on to become chief spokesman and Director General for Press and Communications in the early 2000’s – a job which entailed facing hundreds of journalists every day! He was appointed as Director General for Justice, Freedom and Security in March 2003, at a time when the world was still reacting to the tragic events of September 11th 2001. He then took up a role as Director General of Internal Market and Services, dealing with financial services at the height of the financial crisis. He had a privileged overview of what was going on, attending many important meetings and contributing significantly to some of the solutions found. In the lead up to the UK Brexit referendum, Jonathan was Director General of the EU Task Force, with the difficult task of negotiating with the
Cameron government. He was involved in successfully reaching an agreement in 2016, which was adopted by the British Government and by the European Council (which is the highest body of presidents and prime ministers of the EU). Jonathan was quite proud of the agreement, although he modestly told us that it didn’t play a big role in the referendum campaign. He retired from the Commission shortly afterwards and in 2017 he was awarded a knighthood for “services to UK relations with the European Union”. In retrospect, he is happy that his career panned out the way it did and believes that what he did was useful. He now works for a British based public affairs consultancy firm called the Brunswick group. His job involves a lot of
The old Daviesites House
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