9 minute read
Interview with Sir Jonathan Faull KCMG
INTERVIEW WITH
SIR JONATHAN FAULL KCMG
During 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 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.
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
advising on the EU (where it is going, the ongoing impact of Brexit and where it will go in the future) and he also teaches at several universities and webinars.
Having served for 40 distinguished years in the European Commission, Jonathan has a unique perspective on the inner workings of the EU. He told us that, to understand current politics, you have to understand why the European Union was formed in the first place: it was born out of the belief that “the longer term interest lies in doing things together rather than separately”. Being united allowed the creation of the single market and enabled countries of declining importance to band together to preserve their station and influence within the world. When asked about the criticism of the EU as being needlessly bureaucratic and outdated, he responded that he believes the EU still needs time to mature – 27 countries banding together to make decisions is always going to be messy, especially when the democratic process must be constantly observed, and big decisions require unanimity. He stressed that the EU is not a single country and
Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels (photo taken by Sir Jonathan)
was never designed to be one, yet its strength lies in its ability to face issues with a united front and, if peoples and their leaders continue to believe they are better off together, then the EU will continue to operate. The process of change is slow and exacting, but time is the only way to learn from mistakes and to move forward and face the new challenges of the digital revolution, in which Europe faces the risk of becoming a consumer of products rather than a producer. In conclusion, “the EU is evolutionary, not revolutionary”.
Few have been able to glean more insights into a country’s overseas persona than someone who lives and works abroad. “I’ve been an expat my entire life – you get a different perspective on your home country” Sir Jonathan noted. He believes that the UK still wields considerable soft power around the world, both from our language and from our rich culture which is widely recognised in areas as diverse as, Shakespeare, the Beatles, and football. He stressed that the UK has a strong tradition of democracy and is regarded as a well-run country with great political continuity and with excellent diplomatic and civil services. However, recent political unrest has rather tainted this image. He saw first-hand the massively influential role the UK played within the EU and how it brought the best traditions of ‘pragmatic British politics’ to the table, ensuring that ideas were properly vetted before becoming law. The UK viewed the EU as an economic endeavour and thus maintained a “healthy scepticism” about EU projects, wanting to understand a problem before moving ahead with a solution. The UK brought its “fine traditions of judicial independence” and a willingness to innovate, alongside its links with the rest of the world into the EU, causing it to be the big advocate for open markets and free trade and to minimise protectionist tendencies. Projects such as the creation of the single market and enlargement of the EU were some of the notable successes of the British influence within the EU. However, Jonathan reflected that the same “unique cocktail of geographic and historic factors” which influenced UK politics to pursue these policies also set
Daviesites 1971 (Jonathan Faull 2nd row back, 2nd from left)
it apart from the rest of the EU member states. The UK sees the world differently because it was not occupied during the Second World War and has never been in the thrall of a dictatorship of the left or the right, and therefore it has never been very comfortable with the “rhetoric of the European project”, having never seen the EU as a guarantor of peace and democracy.
Brexit poses many challenges to the UK – one of the biggest that Jonathan highlighted is the threat to the unity of the UK. Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own issues with Brexit, with neither having voted in favour of it. The UK sits in an unusual situation whereby our constitution is unwritten, unlike many other developed nations. We have three devolved parliaments which have very different politics: Northern Ireland has few common political parties with the rest of the UK and Scotland’s politics continue to drift away from England’s and Wales’. The complexity of the interconnection between the parliaments and the constitution has been brought to the forefront during the pandemic (as each government took different actions) and also during Brexit, where disputes had to be settled by the Supreme Court, leading to criticism of the Court as the ‘enemy of the people’ (a situation which Jonathan abhorred). Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England are intertwined in many different ways, as Jonathan explained, using sports teams as an example – we compete all together as Great Britain during the Olympics and yet we have separate rugby union teams which every four years unite into one big team, alongside Ireland and Northern Ireland (which forget their old tensions and combine to create one team). The England short-form cricket captain is an Irishman. This mention of Ireland reminded Jonathan of the seeing the Northern Ireland conflict as a child and schoolboy: he remembers seeing on the Brexit poses many challenges to the UK –one of the biggest that Jonathan highlighted is the threat to the unity of the UK. Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own issues with Brexit, with neither having voted in favour of it.
news familiar-looking streets with high-street brand names, such as WH Smith, but with the shocking addition of soldiers and guns as well. Jonathan observed that most English people visit Scotland and Wales at some point in their life and view it as part of their country, but how many are familiar with the daily realities of Northern Ireland? Nobody wants to see a return to old tensions in Northern Ireland, but Jonathan fears that Brexit will revive them and put the UK’s Union in jeopardy. The border between the EU and the UK runs through Ireland. It is our only land border. A similar situation could occur if Scotland gains independence, as there would be an international border between England and Scotland that has not existed as a trade border for hundreds of years, surely causing even more difficult issues than the current one in Northern Ireland. Jonathan warned us that our generation can no longer take for granted the strength of the Union on which he could rely in his youth.
And Jonathan’s advice for young Carthusians, as he looks back on a long career in public service? He stressed the importance of reading widely, travelling and learning foreign languages, but, above all, he advises our generation to take opportunities when they arise and not to get held back by fear of failure. ■
