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Making the right MOVE?

Making the right MOVE?

2/17/10, 9:06 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:01 PM CET

An exciting new name for the transport department.

The structural reorganisation approved by the European Commission yesterday included a name-change for officials working on transport policy. The directorate-general for transport and energy (DG TREN), has been split up and the transport department set free from its energetic colleagues. 

The assumption was that the new entity would simply be called DG Transport (DG TRAN for short), but Matthias Ruete, the director-general, had other ideas. Perhaps fearing that TRAN sounded too much like the department from which it had been created, TREN, or that it risked confusion with a tram, Ruete resorted to his native German to argue for DG MOVE (short for Mobilitat und Verkehr – mobility and transport)

In a letter to Irène Souka, the Commission’s director-general for personnel and administration as was (lately renamed human resources and security), Ruete argued that the change “would reflect the much evolved mission of the DG”.

“Whereas ‘transport’ implies continued attention for the technical operation of the different transport modes, ‘mobility’ reflects today’s focus on sustainable mobility and on systems,” he wrote.

Sadly, there will always be frivolous doubters – the sort that think DG MOVE is a name better suited to a fitness-centre or a holiday-resort disco (with Reel II Reel’s 1994 dance smash “I Like to Move It (Move It!)” blasting through the sound system).

There will be other doubters who detect that (whatever the German justification) where the abbreviated names of Commission’s departments are reduced to a word (TRADE, ECHO, DIGIT), the word always works in English.

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