Mr Smits goes to Brussels

摘要

He doesn't own a car, preferring on principle to walk whenever possible. And he buys his own sandwiches. But Robert-Jan Smits, Europe's down-to-earth new research chief, is utterly at home in the rarefied world of European Union (EU) bureaucracy.rnSmits, who will become director general for research on 1 July - in time to oversee the gestation and birth, in 2014, of the European Commission's multibillion-euro Eighth Framework Programme for research - ascended to the post in record time. And he arrives with considerable goodwill among the researchers whose lives will be affected by his decisions.