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Martin Westlake (born 1957) is a British and Belgian author (historical, science fiction and short stories in various genres), playwright, biographer, academic and a former high-ranking EU civil servant. He is married to Belgian artist Godelieve Vandamme.
Westlake's forthcoming full-length historical novel, Other Than an Aspen Be, set in the 1914-1918 period, portrays the scourge of war and the plight of refugees and the existential dilemmas these cause. Westlake is represented by Bill Goodall
Westlake has had more than twenty short stories published in various genres. His SF short stories have been published notably in Aphelion and Metaphorosis. His 2021 story, "Going Home", was selected for inclusion in the recently-published The Best of British Science Fiction 2021
A young adult SF novel, The Hunt, was published in 2016 under the pseudonym, Paul Bird. In an interview about the book, which features a young gamer in a futuristic world, Westlake/Bird cites various inspirations including art, literature, and the Bible.
Westlake's plays been performed in Brussels and elsewhere. His farce, The Impotence of Being Frank, was first performed at the Warehouse Theatre (Brussels) by the English Comedy Club (ECC) in May 2017. The comedy was reprised by the ECC at the Warehouse Theatre in May 2019, and taken to the Festival of European Anglophone Theatre Societies (FEATS) in Ottobrun (Munich), where it was performed at the Entity Theatre in June 2019. His Sons and Mothers, six monologues about "three mothers who have lost their sons and three sons who have lost their mothers", was performed by the Little Seal Company at the Warehouse Theatre in October 2019. Westlake was also an original cast member.
Westlake has partnered Brussels-based composer Nigel Clarke (https://nigel-clarke.com/ ) in music/verse compositions. These have included 'Heritage Suite'/'What Hope Saw' (2009); 'Earthrise' (2010); 'Storm Surge' (2013); 'The City in the Sea]' (2013); 'Where a Scarlet Flower Will Blossom (2014); and 'Mysteries of the Horizon]' (2015).
In 2001 Westlake published a full-length biography of British Labour politician, Neil Kinnock to critical acclaim: 'A biography as frank as this one reveals him as a man of equal courage and integrity.' - Mail on Sunday; 'Kinnock was a brave politician – and a thoroughly decent one. He is owed this biography.' - Financial Times; 'Westlake reminds us of Kinnock's pivotal historical importance.' - The Independent; 'This book is one of the most sublimely constructed and factually complete literary gems of the year.' - The Independent on Sunday.
Westlake has since contributed chapters about various aspects of Kinnock's career to a number of edited publications. In 2017 he collaborated with the London Almeida Theatre's Figures of Speech series with an essay about Neil Kinnock's 1987 "A Thousand Generations" speech; A Thousand Generations — Figures of Speech (almeida.co.uk). He has contributed biographical essays to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, notably about former European Parliament Secretary-General, Sir Julian Priestley.
Since 2013 Westlake has been a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, where he also sits on the Academic Council (https://www.coleurope.eu/whoswho/person/martin.westlake ). He runs a research seminar on the constitutional, institutional and political reform of the European Union and its institutions. Between 2000 and 2005 he taught a course at the College about the European Parliament. His former students include Roberta Metsola (née Tedesco), President of the European Parliament (2022 - ). Westlake is also a visiting professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (https://www.lse.ac.uk/european- institute/people/westlake-martin ), where he co-organises and co-chairs, with Anthony Teasdale, a weekly seminar on 'The EU in Practice; Politics and Power in the British System'; https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/the-european-union-in-practice
Westlake has published widely on the European institutions and British politics. His main books as author or editor include:
Westlake has also published a large number of refereed articles, research and occasional papers, chapters in edited volumes, blog pieces and book reviews.
In 2018, writing under the pseudonym Johannes de Berlaymont, Westlake published Working for the EU: How to get in (2018), and has since run an eight-hour career workshop based on the book each autumn at the College of Europe. A second, completely revised, edition was published in August 2024 with the title, Working for the EU: How to get in. Second edition 2024 https://www.johnharperpublishing.co.uk/working-for-the-eu-how-to-get-in/
Westlake's occasional journalism has been published inter alia in the Times, the Guardian, the i, the Financial Times, the European Voice, the Bulletin and Travel Tomorrow (https://traveltomorrow.com/author/mwestlake/ ).
Starting in 1985, Westlake had a lengthy career in European organisations and the EU institutions, rising to become Secretary-General of the European Economic and Social Committee, 2008-2013 before taking early retirement. He began his career in the Council of Europe, working for the Parliamentary Assembly. Joining the European Union, he worked for the Council of the European Union, the European Commission (Secretariat General, DG X, DG Education and Culture) and the European Economic and Social Committee, where he worked first as Head of Communications and then as Director of Consultative Works before becoming Secretary-General. During his time in DG Education and Culture he played a key role in developing the Erasmus Mundus programme (now absorbed into Erasmus Plus [1] ), the EU's answer to the U.S. Fulbright Programme.
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 720 members (MEPs), after the June 2024 European elections, from a previous 705 MEPs. It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world, with an electorate of around 375 million eligible voters in 2024.
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock, is a Welsh politician who was Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Kinnock was considered to be on the soft left of the Labour Party.
The Western European Union was the international organisation and military alliance that succeeded the Western Union (WU) after the 1954 amendment of the 1948 Treaty of Brussels. The WEU implemented the Modified Brussels Treaty. During the Cold War, the Western Bloc included the WEU member-states, plus the United States and Canada, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Paul van Buitenen is a retired Dutch politician of the Europe Transparent Party who served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.
The Bruges Group is a think tank based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1989, it advocates for a restructuring of Britain's relationship with the European Union and other European countries. Its members and staff campaign against the notion of an "ever-closer union" in Europe and, above all, against British involvement in a single European state. The group is often associated with the Conservative Party, including MPs such as Iain Duncan Smith, Daniel Hannan, John Redwood, and Norman Lamont. However, it is formally an independent all-party think tank, and some Labour MPs and peers have cited the publications or attended the meetings of the Bruges Group through the years, such as Frank Field, Gisela Stuart, Lord Stoddart of Swindon and Lord Shore of Stepney.
Diana Paulette Wallis, is a British former Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber. Wallis was first elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and in 2009. She resigned her seat in January 2012 and went on to pursue academic, legal and mediation-related activities.
The Secretariat of the European Parliament is the administrative body of the European Parliament headed by a Secretary-General. It is based in the Kirchberg district of Luxembourg City and around the Brussels-Luxembourg Station in Brussels and employs around 4,000 officials.
Sir Emyr Jones Parry FLSW is a British retired diplomat. He is a former Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations and former UK Permanent Representative on the North Atlantic Council.
The seven institutions of the European Union (EU) are seated in four different cities, which are Brussels (Belgium), Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Strasbourg (France), rather than being concentrated in a single capital city. All four were chosen, among various reasons, for their location halfway between France and Germany, the countries whose rivalry led to two World Wars and whose reconciliation paved the way for European integration. The EU agencies and other bodies are located all across the union, but usually not fixed in the treaties. The Hague is the only exception, as the fixed seat of the Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol). Luxembourg City is the EU capital that can lay claim to having the most of the seven EU institutions based wholly or partly upon its territory, with only the European Council and European Central Bank not having a presence in the city. Over the years, Brussels has become the EU's political hub, with the College of the Commissioners – the European Commission's politically accountable executive – and the European Council both meeting at their Brussels-based headquarters, and the European Parliament and Council of the EU holding the majority of their meetings annually within the city. This has led media to describe it as the de facto "capital of the EU".
Brussels (Belgium) is considered the de facto capital of the European Union, having a long history of hosting a number of principal EU institutions within its European Quarter. The EU has no official capital but Brussels hosts the official seats of the European Commission, Council of the European Union, and European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament. In 2013, this presence generated about €250 million and 121,000 jobs. The main rationale for Brussels being chosen as "capital of the European Union" was its halfway location between France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the three countries whose rivalry played a role in starting the two World Wars and whose reconciliation paved the way for European integration.
Stephen Nathan Kinnock is a British politician serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberafan Maesteg, formerly Aberavon, since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, he has served as Minister of State for Care since 2024.
Sir Julian Gordon Priestley was an English civil-servant who served as Secretary-General of the European Parliament 1997–2007. He was the second President of the Young European Federalists 1974–1976.
Simon Hix is a British political scientist, holder of the Stein Rokkan chair in comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence. He was also Harold Laski Professor of Political Science and pro-director for research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Hix is an expert in European Union politics, and the author of several books, including What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It, Democratic Politics in the European Parliament with Abdul Noury and Gérard Roland, and The Political System of the European Union. He is also associate editor of the international peer-reviewed European Union Politics, and founder and chairman of VoteWatch Europe, an influential online EU affairs think-tank founded in London in 2009 that combines big data with political insight. After a first degree and a master's from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Simon Hix obtained a PhD in Political and Social Science at the European University Institute in Florence in 1995, and lectured in European Politics at Brunel University 1996–97, before joining the LSE in 1997. In this university he was promoted to professor in 2004, and served also as head of its department of government (2012–2015), academic director of its school of public policy (2017–2019), and pro-director for research from 2019. He finally was appointed Stein Rokkan chair of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence in 2021. His main areas of research are voting in parliaments, democratic institutions, and EU politics.
Wilhelmus Adrianus Gerardus Blonk is a Dutch economist. He is currently a member of the board of the Close the Gap Foundation and has published 3 books, 20 studies, ca. 40 articles and more than 500 public speeches.
Michiel Frans van Hulten is an analyst, writer, teacher and consultant. He is a former director of Transparency International EU and a former Dutch politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament (1999–2004) and was chairman of the Labour Party from December 2005 until April 2007.
Anthony Teasdale, FAcSS, is a visiting professor in Practice at the European Institute of the London School of Economics (LSE) and an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University in New York. He was previously the founding Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) - otherwise known as the Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services - in the permanent administration of the European Parliament, a role he performed from 2013 to 2022.. Teasdale has also worked as a Special Adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and HM Treasury in Whitehall, and is co-author of The Penguin Companion to European Union.
The Federal Trust for Education and Research is a research institute studying the interactions between regional, national, European and global levels of government. Founded in 1945 on the initiative of Sir William Beveridge, it has long made a powerful contribution to the study of federalism and federal systems. It has always had a particular interest in the European Union and Britain’s place in it.
Sara Hagemann is a Danish academic and an expert on international and European politics. She has published extensively on issues related to political processes and representation in the European Union, transparency in politics, and the role of national parliaments in international affairs. Sara is currently Professor of Political Science and Vice Dean at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Copenhagen University, where she joined in September 2021. Before then she was associate professor at the London School of Economics and Associate Dean at the LSE School of Public Policy and a faculty member of the LSE European Institute. Sara has also held positions as head of programme and policy analyst at the European Policy Centre's Political Europe Programme and the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, senior fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe, and worked in the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Giacomo Benedetto FRSA is a British Italian political scientist and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is an expert in European Union politics, and has researched and published extensively on the European Parliament, Euroscepticism, and the EU budget.
Nouvelle Europe is a Paris-based organization founded in 2003 by Philippe Perchoc, a researcher at the European Parliament and lecturer at College of Europe and Université catholique de Louvain, and by Thomas Kurkdjian, a French civil servant.
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