It has always been my hope to make my reviews interesting as well as informative, but now and again there is a case where the former is beyond my powers. “Beachcomber”, the one‐time humorous columnist of the Daily Express newspaper, used to satirise a fictitious reference book called the List of Huntingdonshire Cabmen – which was just that. The present volume (though of course of more practical use) appears to belong to the same school. Now in its second edition (the first was not reviewed in these columns), it is a list of about 10,000 officials and politicians of the main institutions and agencies of the European Union, and of representatives of other bodies to the union, providing their addresses, telephone and fax numbers, e‐mail addresses, and short titles of their posts or statements of their responsibilities. What, I wonder, can be the duties of the official listed as being responsible for “horizontal actions”? Many of these officials would be traceable in competing reference works, for instance the same publisher's EU Institutions Register (RR 2004/429). The EU Capital Guide, however, spreads its net wider, covering not just the council, commission, parliament, etc. and the EU agencies, but the representatives of member and non‐member governments to the Union, together with those of trade associations, chambers of commerce, trade unions, interest groups and major companies. Also covered are firms of consultants, lawyers and journalists specialising in EU affairs.
What distinguishes the guide from its competitors and explains its title is its inclusion of other important offices in Brussels not actually associated with the EU: specifically those of the Belgian government (or governments, as the complex Belgian federal system requires five of them) and of Belgian companies, trade and commercial associations and so on. They account for about a tenth of the content of the book. There are sections to cover the offices of the European Commission and Parliament in other countries, whether members or not. The web sites of the EU institutions are also listed. A curious feature, which might be improved, is that only certain sections of the guide are indexed by subject. The information listed relates to the situation before the enlargement of 2004.
Perhaps the best way of showing the scope of the guide is to give a representative selection of bodies whose officials are listed in it: the European Central Bank; the Parliamentary Committee on Fisheries; the Finnish Permanent Representation to the EU; the Highlands and Islands European Partnership; the European Association of Animation Film; the Brussels offices of the Boots Company and the Guardian newspaper; the Euro Info Centre in Krakow; the European Parliament Office in Slovakia; the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia; the Government of the French Community of Belgium; the Belgian Coffee Roasters' Association; the Brussels office of the Gazet van Antwerpen; the Chamber of Commerce of Liège. There can be few officials of importance to the EU who are not included in this directory, but prospective purchasers would have to consider the extent to which it might overlap with any similar directories already on their shelves.
