Co-ordinating aces

Charmaine Hogan says that her attachment to gambling issues is strictly for working hours only.

It was Malta’s accession to the European Union that sent Charmaine Hogan’s career on its upward trajectory. “I always wanted to come to Brussels and spend time working in EU affairs,” says Hogan, who has been in her current role for 18 months – as a national expert from Malta seconded  to the European Commission’s internal market and services department, working on gambling issues. But she has been in Brussels since 2004.

Hogan studied international relations at the University of Malta, and then worked at the government’s trade promotion agency that is now Malta Enterprise, involving numerous trips to Brussels. But it was in 2001 that she took on a job that would give her hands-on experience of the EU. As part of Malta’s accession process, a secretariat was set up within the prime minister’s office to co-ordinate all negotiations with the Commission, and Hogan was invited to become a member.

“At first I was unsure about joining the team, but the temptation was just too much,” she says. It proved to be a good decision as she thoroughly enjoyed the experience, even though it involved a heavy workload and long hours, as well as other tensions. “Some people had been in the civil service for a long time and we come in, all relatively young, and we’re sort of bossing them around. But there were decisions to be taken and targets to be met.”

Once Malta was in the EU, Brussels was the obvious next step for Hogan. “I wanted to represent government, to do something for the country. So I was in the first wave of attachés to come here,” she says. Her job was co-ordinator of the competitiveness unit, focusing on industry and the internal market, at Malta’s permanent representation to the EU.

New challenge

Then an opportunity arose to move again, this time to her current role in the Commission. “It was during work on the services directive that gambling became more of an issue. I’m interested in the topic, in the regulatory challenges. I think I’ve been lucky to come into this job at a time when there is a lot happening in this area,” says Hogan, although she is quick to point out that she is no gambler: “The only thing I would do in a casino is people-watch.”

The Commission has been consulting on issues concerning online gambling and there are now expectations of some follow-up. Regulation is currently a matter for the member states, despite the increasingly cross-border nature of betting.

All seconded national experts know that their time in their current role is limited (secondments can last up to four years). So, has Hogan got her next move mapped out? “I would like to think that my secondment will last until something on this issue comes out from the Commission,” she says.

But she has already experienced a world that she would like to explore further. In the summer she went to Africa as part of Project Umubano, a scheme run by the UK Conservative party to help improve the transition to democracy in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

“It was an amazing experience. I’m definitely going back,” says Hogan. As a result of her work on the project, she was invited to 10 Downing Street. But does Hogan have any ambitions to become a politician? “Perhaps I could become Malta’s first female MEP. Why not?”