Contact: Sammy McDavid
A European Union official visits the state next week as a guest of Mississippi State.
Anthony Smallwood, directorate general/external relations for the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, speaks on the university campus Wednesday [March 28]. "Fifty Years of European Integration, A Half Decade of Achievement" will be the topic for his public program to begin at 10 a.m. in the Rogers Auditorium of McCool Hall.
The following day [the 29th], he will be in Jackson to meet with government officials and discuss the same topic at the capital city's Executive Lecture Forum. While the noon ELF luncheon program at the downtown University Club is not open to the general public, interested members of the news media are invited to attend.
Smallwood's trip is coordinated by the university's Janos Radvanyi Center in International Security Studies, in cooperation with the College of Business and Industry.
He comes to the state in conjunction with the 50th anniversary observance of the Treaty of Rome. Signed March 25, 1957, it created the European Economic Community--the multi-national compact (usually called the European Union) that laid the foundations for ever-closer cooperation and progressive political integration among the peoples of the continent.
While on the Starkville campus, he also will be special guest for a luncheon given by the Office of Research and Economic Development and the Greater Starkville Partnership. Later, he joins MSU President Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong and his wife Mary for dinner.
A British national born in Kenya, Smallwood is a graduate of England's Bristol Polytechnic and University of Keele. He also has completed post-graduate study at Reed College in Oregon and Oxford University in his country.
Smallwood first worked for the European Commission in the mid-1980s. After leaving for positions in British government and education, he returned to the organization in 1995 and joined its U.S. delegation in January.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.