Image courtesy of Edinburgh Europa Institute

From the outset, Papotis had struck George as a very singular chap. And George came to have plenty of reason for believing his first impressions.

George felt he knew Greek people well: he’d had several close acquaintances with Greeks at Cambridge. He admired their open-hearted and earnest attitude and had even visited his friend Ioannis in Thessaloniki in the summer of 1978 on an Inter-rail trip round Europe.

But Papotis was different.

Arrogant. Outspoken. And downright rude.

The first time George saw Papotis at work was in a technical working group on the colour scheme of the Euro notes, which Papotis had been allowed to chair. His head of department reckoned the discussion would take months, if not years, and that, anyway, the Directors of the National Banks would weigh in at the end to make the final decision.

Papotis had met George by chance one day in the cafeteria and had let drop – George would later come to realise that, in fact, he had boasted – that he was chairing a technical meeting the following week.

“Would you like to come along to my technical group?”, Papotis had asked, with an air of superiority.

George arrived early at the meeting and immediately sensed something was not quite right with the way Papotis was treating the delegates as they arrived.

“No, Belgium, you can’t sit there”, he said pointing his finger and shaking his head. “The consultants will have to sit there to make their presentations. Can’t you see, there isn’t enough room at the front table, so you’ll just have to make room for them”.

George, who felt he had not yet attended enough meetings to know what the normal practice was, became decidedly uncomfortable.

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen,” Papotis began at exactly 9.30 a.m., even though some delegates were still arriving, due to a delay on the metro.

“Let’s go straight into the presentations of the four colour scheme options”, he continued seemingly enjoying the embarrassment he was causing the latecomers by ignoring them as they arrived and proceeding with the meeting all the same.

While smoking in meeting rooms was still permitted in the buildings of the ERA in the mid-1990s, restraint was usually shown, and the practice was certainly discouraged.

None of that held Papotis back.

When the coffee arrived thirty minutes into the meeting, he lit up and took a quick couple of puffs. Several delegates raised their eyebrows while Papotis nonchalantly held his long, white Virginia Slim between his index and middle finger, intermittently tapping the ash and exhaling the smoke, bellowing his cheeks with an uncanny sense of indifference.

The Swedish delegate coughed, somewhat deliberately, but Papotis simply ignored her. He even began puffing in her direction, just to defy her. She turned to the UK delegate to her side, noticeably irritated, but the smoke kept coming her way.

George was appalled and found himself experiencing a roller coaster of emotions. “What crazy turn is this man going to make next?” he asked himself.

Papotis was making almost every mistake that was possible for a chair to make.

While the French delegate had been rather extensive in her remarks, Papotis didn’t hold himself back from cutting her off. “I’ve already asked delegations to keep things brief, so that’s enough from France,” he pronounced.

Then, before passing the parole to Luxembourg, Papotis announced: “Luxembourg, you may take the floor – though I guess your position doesn’t differ at all from that of Belgium!”

To the Italian delegation, who had raised his for a second time, all Papotis could do was give out a loud “tut” before asking him to “Gon on, then.”

And few in the room found it funny when Papotis, after the UK delegation intervened to show his support for the pastel-coloured range of Euro notes, added the aside: “Everyone knows it’s most unlikely you’ll ever come into the Euro.”

Papotis did all this with what George supposed some would call a sense of humour. But what style? George conceded to himself that anyone with a deep admiration for farce would probably at least have appreciated the scenography.

But Papotis just didn’t stop springing surprises. Around midday, he suddenly announced “We’ve made such good progress this morning, I think we only need carry on till 1 o’clock.”

Several delegates looked shocked, and Germany raised its flag to object.

“Don’t worry, you will have chance to speak again before we close,” replied Papotis. “Anyway, it’s nice weather outside, so you can enjoy Brussels in the sun this afternoon, for a change.”

Having killed off any enthusiasm for carrying on with the meeting, and having indicated that, in any case, the interpreters had not been booked beyond 1 o’clock, so continuing was really not really an option, as the delegates began to leave, Papotis leant over to George and gestured to tell him something.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Papotis whispered, trying to implicate George in his schema, “but I have to get back to Athens this afternoon. My uncle is giving a speech at the opening of the Greek Parliament this evening, and I wanted to be there.”

George only found out later that Papotis was the nephew of the Vice-President of the European Parliament and came from a family of Greek shipping magnates.

“Aha,” thought George, “Explains the ‘untouchable’ aura. The power of nepotism.”

+++

It wasn’t for about ten days later until George next saw Papotis. The secretary had asked George whether he was attending the meeting between Papotis and Schneider, his head of department at the time.

“No,” replied George, “I haven’t heard anything.”

All George saw was Vitale, his older Italian colleague, walking down the corridor towards Schneider’s office just before 3 o’clock. A couple of minutes later Papotis appeared at his door, with that same supercilious grin he had worn all through the working party with the Member States.

“Hi George,” he announced in his typically flippant tone. “Are you coming to the meeting? It seems there will be developments in the Euro colour scheme file.”

“No,” replied George, “I don’t know anything about it.”

Papotis parted and George returned to the filing he was doing.

About fifteen minutes later, George, needing a new ring file for his voluminous paperwork and some more staples, got up and made his way to the secretariat, where the stationery supplies were kept.

As he turned into the office, he heard some loud, muffled voices coming from Schneider’s office and received a querying look from the secretary.

“What’s all that about? she mouthed, pointing towards Schneider’s office.

George shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He quickly found the staples he needed, grabbed the first file he could see and headed back to his office.

About twenty minutes later, George heard Vitale striding down the corridor, huffing heavily and muttering to himself. Then Papotis appeared again by his door, this time short on words and devoid of any grin.

His reddened eyes told George everything he needed to know.

Papotis’ swanker had been cut back. The unacceptability of his rudeness towards the Member State delegates made brutally clear to him. The grossly inappropriate direction he was giving to the file redressed.

Papotis had received the administrative counterpart of a vicious beating: he looked bruised inside, the pain showing the self-pitying gaze on his face.

George was speechless.

“I guess. I’ll see you. Later,” mumbled Papotis as he turned to leave.

George sat back in his chair and sighed. Newcomer that he was, he hadn’t, after all, been wrong in his assessment of how the ERA operated.

But that didn’t stop him having mixed feelings about the whole affair.

On the one hand, Papotis had behaved outrageously, and there had to be consequences. Then again, from the look on his face, the punishment he had received seemed extreme.

The whole thing reminded him of the day one of his best mates, Steve Barclay, had been given three swipes of the cane from Mr. Rover, the Headmaster, for something all schoolboys have done, at least once in their lives.

Both experiences, so many years apart, made George feel small and relieved that it wasn’t him. At the same time, he felt ashamed that such violence, whatever veneer it had been given, could not have been avoided.

“Full of sharp corners,” George thought to himself. “And pretty wild.”

George turned to the pile of papers in his in-tray perched on the corner of his desk and began reading the next note with instructions from Schneider, as the words of Maxwell and his kind smile came to mind.

“Rifle clean. Boots polished. And on with the next financial operation.”