Choosing a new Secretary General for ESTEP

I am a candidate for the job of secretary general of ESTEP.  I therefore believe that a few words about the way I see that job might enlighten ESTEP's membership.

First of all, following on the steps of Jean-Claude Charbonnier and Bertrand de Lamberterie will in itself be a big challenge.  The first Secretary General has given birth to ESTEP, after participating in its conception, and raised the child until it became a healthy youth. The second SG has reinforced ESTEP and pushed it into adulthood along new paths, of which the SPIRE initiative is a brilliant example. Both have efficiently and smoothly run a complex organization based mostly on the voluntary participation of its members.

Today, the originality of ESTEP, among the 36 European Technological Platforms, is that  as one of the early platforms it has accumulated invaluable experience.

ESTEP is a tool for dialoging with the EU Commission and helping it build its research agenda.  Its mission is to formulate  a vision of the future of the steel sector in terms of technological change in order to foster the growth, competitiveness and sustainability of the region.  Moreover, that growth should be "smart, sustainable and inclusive".  The vision should be translated in terms of a research agenda for the steel sector projecting at least until mid-century and this SRA turned into research programs and projects, carried by ESTEP's membership and empowering members to lead the change.

ESTEP's membership includes steel and its value chain.

Moreover, ESTEP has established connections with other industries that produce core commodities, those that are embedded in almost any artifacts of modern life, what used to be called called "heavy industry", then "energy and resource intensive industry" and now, more neutrally, process industry - most notably in A.SPIRE.

This is what should be managed in the next few years, to keep it working and moving forward with thrust and momentum.  And to use it as a laboratory for exploring new ideas, new threats, new opportunities and new challenges in order to come up with a renewed vision, when the crisis will have waned.

The challenge is high. Because the steel industry in Europe is diverse, composed of global and regional corporations.  Because growth has deserted Europe and it is not clear when and how it will come back. Because society stakeholders are not yet all fully convinced of how unique, essential, irreplaceable, enduring and cumulative, for ever changing and providing new properties and functions our material is.
Because the strong plant designers and manufacturers based in Europe have their main customers overseas. Because our future is for us to write!

ESTEP is one of the ways to help write our future, in a collective manner.

Another challenge is our connection with the Commission.  On the one hand, the Commission is responsible for defining legislation, which sometimes raises issues for business.  On the other hand, the Commission endeavors to project a vision of our collective future towards the second half of this century and gives us an opportunity to be part of the construction of this future, something that is rare in our daily professional life.  Exchange at this level cannot be angelic nor simple.  What is important is to make sure that there is indeed an exchange, that one party is not pushing a purely intellectual or bureaucratic vision!

The last challenge is that of running a collective organization, which is composed of strong and powerful members, and still help it keep a strong personality of its own; of balancing centrifugal and centripetal forces....

The Secretary General's job is not to provide answers to all these questions, but to help the organization and its Chairman do it.

I believe that I can do this job, for several reasons.

I understand the inner working of the industry at a detailed level, both technological and economic/business. I am familiar with the European ecosystem, having played various roles in ESTEP and RFCS and run very many research programs myself, including fairly big ones like ULCOS. I am a convincing speaker and I can lead teams forward through complex issues and with a sense of collective imagination.  I have accumulated experience over years and I feel at the top of my abilities, as creative as ever.  I also feel multicultural - as a matter of fact I have taught intercultural management at the University.

What is particularly appealing in this role is that steel is one of the invariants of our societies, that it provides a kind of ecological service to the anthroposphere and has to continue doing it for a long time. And the fact that Europe is the strongest region in the world in terms of GDP, of the well-being of its people and, surprisingly enough, of consumption of steel per capita.  In spite of its current pessimism and of the depth of the crisis in which it is lingering.