So, the process is in its last stages.

I was at a rather dull meeting this morning (with one or two bright points which I’ll write up in a public post this evening). In attendance also was my good friend M. who told me that she had discovered that five of the six places in Commissioner Rehn’s cabinet are already filled. Unfortunately for me, four of the five are male, and only one female, and the Finns are particularly concerned to have a reasonable representation of women, so I may well lose out.

But apparently their ex-President put in a word for me over lunch, and Paddy Ashdown will do the same tomorrow. And my friend M., who is a woman, argued strongly to the Commissioner that gender shouldn’t really matter so much. So at least the wait is likely to be over soon.

I hope it’s not necessary to say that I myself don’t particularly resent the gender dimension to this situation. I’m a little pissed off that I may lose out because they couldn’t find a Finnish woman to fill one of the three slots for Finns, but I’m well aware that all these positions are created and filled by political criteria; I suspect that my native language will also tell against me (supposedly there should be some balance between French speakers and English speakers). And in any case I support the idea of hiring more women for senior political positions in general, which means by extension that I have to take the lumps if this turns out to work against me in particular.

But it’s not over yet anyway…