Autocracy so powerful that it destroys the whole Office, rather than ensure control and stability
Reference: Omnipotence paradox
Summary: The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
Anonymously posted over a year ago was a long piece in French which compared Battistelli to Napoleon in a not-so-flattering way, putting aside corporate angles. Earlier this year we published a partial translation, but that leaves out some other bits that are worth highlighting.
For example, as one reader put it to us, with additional bits from the original (the
only such article posted there from this author):
Ses maréchaux et ministres connurent des sorts divers : de l’exécution capitale jusqu’au service servile de la monarchie restaurée, alors qu'ils devaient leurs carrières à la Révolution et leur fortune à Napoléon. Rares furent ceux qui surent se tenir.
In English: "His marshals and ministers experienced various fates, ranging from capital punishment to the groveling service of the restored monarchy, even though they owed their careers to the French revolution and their fortunes to Napoleon. Few were those who knew how to behave."
This also aptly describes Mr. Battistelli and his confederates.
Lui, intégra l’Ãâ°cole Nationale d'Administration, l'ENA, créée en 1945, qui ne dispense pas de formation à l’autoritarisme. Mais, si elle fournit à la France des administrateurs pétris du sens de l'intérêt général ou de l'Ãâ°tat, elle en produit aussi qui imbus d’eux-mêmes ont seuls foi en leur omniscience : il convient donc de dire qu’elle nourrit assez bien l'aspiration à l’omnipotence de certains de ses élèves.
In English: "He was admitted to Ãâ°NA, the National School of Administration, an institution which doesn't offer training in authoritarianism. But if she provides France administrators steeped in a sense for the common interest or of the State, she also produces self-imbued others who are believe in their personal omniscience; one must admit that she feeds the yearning for omnipotence of a few of her students."
National School of Administration.
His portrait is thus mostly complete, with the exception of that neo Carlovingian empire bit. I'm coming to that.
Le voici donc décrit, à ceci près qu’il y manque ce néo-Empire Carolingien. J’y arrive.
Let us look at the facts in a broad sense.
Changement dans le régime des pensions à partir de 2009 et passage d’un régime de répartition à un régime par capitalisation : cela a et ne cessera mécaniquement d'avoir pour effet de réduire considérablement la responsabilité financière future de l’OEB au titre des pensions, et cet effet ira toujours en s’accroissant au fur et à mesure que partiront les anciens et arriveront les nouveaux impétrants.
Change in the pension regime beginning 2009, and transition from a pay-as-you-go system to a funded one: this has, and will, automatically reduce the EPO's future financial liabilities for pensions, and this effect will become increasingly important as new recruits will replace leaving older staff members.
Suppression de facto du droit de grève auquel on substitua une hypothétique autorisation – car fait du prince – de prendre des jours de congés sans solde : ceci était le préalable pour donner naissance aux forceps à un nouvel Office.
De facto abolition of the right to strike, against which was substituted a theoretical permission of taking unpaid holidays, dependent of the monarch's good will: this was the prerequisite for permitting the forceps delivery of a new Office.
Introduction de la CPC, classification technique commune entre l’office états-unien des brevets, USPTO, et l’OEB, sur la base de la Classification Européenne (EC) que l’Office, qui la développa et la maintint à ses frais, fit don à l’USPTO, à ses dépens, car perdant par là même ce qu'il avait seul construit pour atteindre l'excellence jusqu'à peu reconnue internationalement.
Introduction of the CPC, a common classification scheme for the USPTO and the EPO, which is based...
Fast-forwarding a bit we have:
Alors, que faire ?
English: "Then, what is to be done?"
Over a year has passed and quite a lot has changed. Since then, for example, Battistelli got reprimanded and his team is falling apart, with imminent top-level departures. Even French politicians are lashing out at Battistelli; several of them openly call him an embarrassment to France.
The point about ENA and omnipotence is familiar to us. To repeat a text about ENA, which we
translated a year ago, the first sentence in the introduction says "In 2007, for France to survive, we need to free us from the omnipotence of the ENA."
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