Talk:Leslie Fielding

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"Director-General"[edit]

This article says twice that Fielding was "Director-General of the European Commission", which implies that he was the boss of the whole thing. In fact there are 28 Directors-General (there's always one for each member-state of the EU, so in his day there would only have been a dozen or so), and each is responsible for a different department, or Directorate General. So at the very least the article should be changed to say "a Director-General" or "one of the Directors-General" to make clear that he's not the boss of the whole thing, but if possible someone should find out what his department was. I assume it's the diplomatic department, called the Directorate General for External Relations, but a source would ideally be needed for that.

69.157.94.137 (talk) 15:42, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited the page to clarify Sir Leslie's role at the European Commission. The source was the following line from his memoirs (p121, Kindly Call Me God, ISBN 13: 9780956216700, Boermans Books, 2009)

"In 1973, on Britain’s entry into the European Community, I was seconded from the FO to the European Commission in Brussels, as one of the directors (in Whitehall terms, ‘Under- Secretaries’) responsible for external relations."

as well as verbal confirmation with Sir Leslie himself.