A European Life

Michael Tracy’s book Memoirs recount his experiences from boyhood in wartime Scotland, through his life in public school and university, to postings in various international organisations and a senior position within the European Union in Brussels; then to involvement in Russia and other Central/European countries in the 1990s. The book concludes with an assessment of current issues facing both the EU and Russia; also Britain in its relations with the EU. Tracy has been president of the British Agricultural Economics Society and is an honorary member of the Académie d’Agriculture de France. His final chapter assesses the issues currently facing both the European Union and Russia. Taking the story up to May 2010, it discusses the prospects for the Eurozone, and the implications of Britain’s new coalition government for Britain’s relations with the EU (a subject which he has followed from the outset in the late 1950s). This is not a history: It is a personal, lively and often humorous account of Michael Tracy’s experiences, in which personal contacts figure largely. Nor is it a tract for or against the European Union; on the other hand, it sheds a more human light on proceedings in Brussels.