Guess King Battistelli's plan to fix the Euro Patent Office. Yep, give himself more power

Situation goes from terrible to surreal

Trumpian

When he was told he had broken Dutch laws with his staff investigations, Battistelli responded by saying the EPO was an international organization and was not beholden to the laws of any country.

When the EPO's independent Boards of Appeal decided to hold a meeting into the dismissal of one of its members by Battistelli (rather than simply rubber-stamping his decision), he threatened the board, saying it did not have the right to investigate the case or conduct an appeal. And argued, formally, that any decision it reached would be "unlawful."

He then drew up and pushed reform proposals to the Boards of Appeal itself that limited the Board of Appeal's autonomy on budget and staffing and gave him – the EPO president – the right to decide who was appointed as its head. The Boards of Appeal rules of procedure would also henceforth be decided by, you guessed it, the EPO president.

When a subset of the Administrative Council approached Battistelli to urge him to stop his targeting of staff, it reported in a letter that was later leaked that he became agitated and stormed out of the room.

When the Administrative Council then passed a resolution ordering him to stop disciplinary hearings until an independent review had been carried out into allegations of foul play, Battistelli commissioned his own review that concluded the situation was fine and was improving, held a one-day conference to discuss the paid-for report, and then fired staff union secretary Laurent Prunier.

Il Duce

The result of this behavior at a critical European institution has been an increasing chorus of condemnation from politicians, unions, trade publications and the mainstream media, not to mention numerous staff strikes. But the president, who can only be fired before his term ends by the collective will of the EPO's 38-member state Administrative Council, has continued on regardless.

In that sense, Battistelli has become a true dictator within the EPO – a situation registered in the fact that staff has given him a zero per cent approval rating.

Benoit Battistelli is no longer acting in the interests of the organization he is supposed to oversee. Even if you take the most generous possible view of his reform proposals, the end result is that he is slowly dismantling the European Patent Office's institutional structures toward a single goal: his own personal victory.

If Battistelli succeeds in his goal thanks to the failure of the EPO's Administrative Council to act, he will end up standing at the top of a pile of organizational rubble. ®