Jonathan Fryer - the right choice for Europe

Jonathan in Belgium

Jonathan lived in Brussels for seven years, having been sent there by Reuters to cover the European institutions. Later, he was a theatre critic for the Belgian English-language magazine, The Bulletin, covering both French and Flemish shows and travelling all over the country. Together with the Bulletin's art critic Rona Dobson, he wrote a book on Brussels seen through the eyes of naïf artists.

He did consultancy work on EU-Third World issues and NGO relations with the EU for both the Ecumenical Centre in Brussels and the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, leading to a study on the use and abuse of food aid: Food for Thought.

The first time Jonathan got elected was in Belgium, to the foreigners' consultative council in Watermael-Boitsfort, representing the commune's English-speaking and Scandinavian residents. Since leaving to live in London, he has often returned to the capital of Europe, notably to attend meetings of the Council of the European Liberal, Democratic and Reformist parties (ELDR) in the European Parliament.

Jonathan in France

While a teenager, Jonathan got a diploma in French from the Tours Institute of Poitiers University and French remains his most fluent foreign language. He particularly studied André Gide, who was the subject of one of his books, in conjunction with Oscar Wilde.

Sessions of both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg brought Jonathan several times to that historic town, as did one memorable European Council (heads of government meeting). These convinced him more strongly than ever that (a) EU decision-making should be more open, and (b) there should be a single seat for the Parliament, in Brussels.

Paris has been a favourite city for many years and Jonathan rented a tiny studio flat there for a while, working in various archives and conferring with French political leaders. The French have been sadly absent from the European Liberal family in recent years, but Jonathan has been party to discussions with some of the more liberal-minded members of the UDF and related groups.

Jonathan in Germany

Though Jonathan was briefly a teenage exchange student in Essen, it was while he was doing research in Berlin for his book on Christopher Isherwood that he really got to know Germany. He has travelled extensively across the country, including regular visits to the DDR before the Berlin Wall came down, mainly seeing Quaker and Church contacts.

For many years, the German Liberal Party (FDP) was awarded the post of Foreign Minister - for a long time, in the form of Hans-Dietrich Genscher - which meant that international Liberal gatherings have often been held in German cities. Indeed, Jonathan will be attending the ELDR Congress in Berlin this October, and the 60th anniversary of Liberal International in Hamburg in November.

Much of the work that Jonathan has been doing on good governance for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy has been in cooperation with the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, the German Liberal foundation, which has also sponsored conferences and workshops in the Federal Republic

Jonathan in Italy

A school trip to Florence and Venice was a revelation, stimulating an ongoing interest in fine art, though it was when Jonathan accompanied the Ballet Béjart to Venice on assignment that he really got to know that city, last visited for an ELDR Council meeting.

Work for the EU-NGO Liaison Committee on Third World issues usually took Jonathan to Milan, but most of his purely political journeys have been to Rome, a city that figures prominently in his biography of the eccentric novelist Ronald Firbank. So too the island of Sicily, which Jonathan last visited while lecturing on a cruise ship, but particularly memorable for an ecumenical workshop outside which he caught his only sight of a living Pope: John Paul II.

In Turin, writing about the Slow Food Movement, Jonathan became aware of the huge regional variety of Italian cuisine and of the importance of eating locally and naturally. Italy has taught him a lot about the quality of life.

Jonathan in Luxembourg

Before the European Parliament building in Brussels was built, several sessions a year were held in Luxembourg, which Jonathan covered for Reuters, sending his copy by ticker tape, in the days before email. He also reported on one Luxembourg national parliamentary election, which brought about the unexpected ousting of the government, the one and only time he has had a story in The Times.

In those days there was a brilliant special train that linked Brussels to Luxembourg and on to Strasbourg, since suspended. And in the absence of budget airlines, Luxembourg was the starting point for cheap flights to the United States on Icelandic Airlines, enabling Jonathan to get to California two summers running to interview Christopher Isherwood for his biography of the novelist.

Through Liberal International, Jonathan got to know well its President, the Luxembourg Prime Minister (and later President of the European Commission), Gaston Thorn, about whom he wrote briefly for The Guardian following Thorn's recent death.

Jonathan in Netherlands

Jonathan's first professional assignment in the Netherlands was to cover a police siege of the French Embassy in The Hague, when Japanese terrorists took the place over. For several years after that, he returned to the Dutch capital in less dramatic circumstances, working part-time for the Dutch Minister of Culture, Marga Klompé. His latest working visit there was to accompany a group of Kuwaiti diplomats to the International Court of Justice.

Amsterdam has been the location for several international Liberal gatherings, at one of which Jonathan compèred two 'Question Time' sessions with political leaders. Through Liberal International and ELDR, he has worked closely with the main Dutch Liberal Party, the VVD, last year going on a joint delegation with them to Jordan.

He has became an aficionado of rijstafel in Holland's Indonesian restaurants - on one occasion celebrating the fact that the Dutch translation of his book on the Great Wall of China was made a Book Society choice!

Jonathan in Denmark

Though Jonathan seems to end up frequently transiting through Copenhagen airport when flying SAS to the rest of Scandinavia and the Baltic states, he got to know the city in leisurely fashion over a number of years, first at meetings with Danish aid agencies, consulting about overseas development projects, and later through ELDR, when Foreign Minister Uffe Ellerman-Jensen was the organisation's president.

As part of the course Jonathan teaches at SOAS, he examines the Danish model of social security, especially care of the elderly and the decentralised health service — just one of many lessons Britain could learn from Denmark! Whereas there can never be a "one-size-fits-all" social or taxation policy, he believes we should be more prepared to copy best practice.

Each time he goes to Copenhagen, at least in summer, Jonathan tries to go to the Tivoli Gardens, and unforgettably saw Marlene Dietrich performing live on stage there.

Jonathan in Ireland

As a Patron of the Oscar Wilde Society and author of three books on the playwright and his circle, Jonathan has naturally spent considerable time in Dublin. But he first got to know the Emerald Isle hitchhiking from Dun Laoghaire to Galway when a schoolboy. He has seen the country develop from an under-populated backwater to the prosperous Celtic Tiger it has become since being part of the EU.

He has always been struck how the Irish government trumpets EU contributions to the economy (for example, signs by the side of new highways, saying where the funding came from), in stark contrast to Britain!

Through ELDR and Liberal International, Jonathan has worked with Pat Cox, the independent MEP and recently President of the European Parliament and through his journalistic work has encountered former state President Mary Robinson several times. He is impressed by the way Eire now manages to punch above its weight on the international stage.

Jonathan in the United Kingdom

Jonathan was born in Manchester and spent most of his childhood in the North West and North Wales. He left Manchester Grammar School before the end of his final year, to travel overland to Vietnam, returning to Britain to go to Oxford University (St Edmund Hall). On graduation, he moved to London (Westminster), to work for Reuters, who later sent him to Brussels.

Since 1982, Jonathan has been based in London, moving around over the years from Kensington and Chelsea to Bromley, Waltham Forest and now Tower Hamlets. As well as his media work, he lectures part-time in Humanities at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and speaks regularly to women's clubs and other groups around the capital.

He was a Councillor in Bromley for one term and fought the parliamentary seats of Chelsea, Orpington and Leyton, as well as all but one of the European elections, narrowly missing becoming London's second MEP in 2004.

See also Jonathon's "In London" page

Jonathan in Greece

When Jonathan first went to Greece, as a schoolboy who had hitch-hiked through what was then Yugoslavia, he was met with tanks in the streets in Athens, as the Colonels had just seized control. It was a reality that helped to politicise him, and he followed with interest the country's road back to democracy and its successful accession to what is now the European Union.

He was able to see Athens and the Peloponnese in calmer conditions when the American photographer Bill Caskey invited Jonathan to write the introduction to his volume of black and white photographs of classical Greece. Subsequently, Jonathan has travelled to a number of the Greek islands, lecturing on the eastern Mediterranean.

Greece has rarely had a high profile in European Liberal politics, but Jonathan did attend a seminar on European integration in Thessaloniki. And he will be watching closely the post-mortem on this summer's terrible fires and European assistance in combating them

Jonathan in Portugal

Portuguese is Jonathan's second most fluent foreign language, mainly because of the time he spent working and travelling in Brazil, but for the past two decades he has usually got to Portugal every year and considers Lisbon to be his favourite continental city. He has become an aficionado of Lisbon's old literary cafés, in the steps of the poet Fernando Pessoa.

When International PEN (the writers' organisation) decided to hold one of its congresses, which he attended, in Madeira, the regional government pulled out all the stops, even bringing over the greatest living fado singer, Amalia Rodriguez, to perform at the farewell open-air banquet - an example Brighton or Bournemouth could usefully learn from?

In fact, Funchal is a favourite location for seminars of all kinds, the last one Jonathan attended (as the UK representative) being a gathering of European citizen groups. He returned to Lisbon, meanwhile, during the Portuguese EU presidency, for policy discussions

Jonathan in Spain

As the main strength of Spanish Liberalism is currently in Catalonia, Barcelona has figured largely in Jonathan's political travels in Iberia, though he had, like many Britons, first tasted Spanish flavours in the Balearic and Canary Islands, before going on to the mainland splendours of Madrid, Seville and Cadiz. Tenerife hosted one of the best ELDR Council meetings of recent years, underlining the shift southwards of the EU's axis in the mid-1980s.

Jonathan was the Press Officer at the Liberal International Congress when it was held in Madrid, at a time when Latin America was moving out of dictatorships and new Liberal partners from there turned up in the Spanish capital in force.

One of Jonathan's special interests is the so-called Barcelona Process, building links between the different shores of the Mediterranean, not least through Euro-Arab dialogue. One doesn't have to travel far in Andalusia to be reminded of the Moorish influence in that part of the world.

Jonathan in Austria

During two successive winters, Jonathan went skiing with his school at Kitzbuhel in the Austrian Alps. But it was while he was researching his biography of Christopher Isherwood that he got to know Vienna and Salzburg, interviewing people who had been friends of the novelist in Europe and California.

Sadly, Austrian Liberals are a tiny, marginal force. But Vienna has nonetheless become a frequent port of call, mainly as a staging post to eastern European destinations, as Austrian Airlines flies to places many others don't. It was thanks to them that Jonathan was able to get to Sarajevo shortly after the war in Bosnia ended, for a PEN-organised gathering bringing Bosniac, Serb and Croat writers together in an exercise of reconciliation.

While in Brussels, Jonathan became a sort of honorary grandson to the Vienna-born Austro-Hungarian novelist Edith de Born, inheriting her library and all her papers after her death, which he hopes to use in a memoir of her some time in the future.

Jonathan in Finland

When Liberal International decided to hold one if its congresses in the sticks way out of Helsinki in the late 1980s, Jonathan appreciated just how wild and windswept parts of Finland are outside summer! It was an interesting time to be there, as Finland was watching nervously what was happening in the then Soviet Union. After the Congress, Jonathan led a small party of British LibDems to Leningrad (as it then was) for meetings with the city council: the forerunner of the new-style Russia.

He has been back to Helsinki many times since, once to attend an executive of the ELDR Council, in December, when people huddled round sunlamps in cafes avoiding seasonal depression. It was a revelation to go back on a cruise-ship in mid-summer when everyone's mood had changed.

With the end of the Cold War and Finland's need to be neutral, it has become an active EU member and handled its presidency of the Union with aplomb, providing Jonathan with plenty of journalistic copy. For several years, the British Section of the Association of European Journalists (on whose executive Jonathan sits) held its meetings in the Finnish Centre in London, strengthening the ties.

Jonathan in Sweden

While a student, Jonathan stayed in Uppsala with a Swedish couple he had met on the Trans-Siberian Express, and visited Gothenburg. Later, when he was working in Brussels as Secretary of the European and Near East Section of the (Quakers') Friends World Committee for Consultation, whose Treasurer was Swedish, he travelled in that capacity to Stockholm. While there, he also researched and co-wrote a short biographical booklet on a Quaker member of the Swedish royal family, Elsa Cedegren, who headed the Swedish Red Cross.

Swedish Liberals have been prominent in both ELDR and Liberal International, hosting conferences and executives that Jonathan has attended. He also co-operates with the Swedish Liberal foundation SILC, which runs a number of projects in good governance in countries in democratic transition. Similarly, he has collaborated with Swedish PEN in monitoring trials of writers and publishers in Turkey.

One memorable summer, he sailed through the beautiful islands off Stockholm and visited Gotland in the Baltic Sea.

Jonathan in Cyprus

Jonathan has been following the Cyprus situation closely since being invited to Nicosia by the Cypriot Liberal Party to address their national congress. Since then he has visited the island several times, travelling widely on both sides of the green line.

When he was President of the Diplomatic and Commonwealth Writers Association, he was invited by the government of Cyprus for a week of briefings by Ministers, opposition politicians, officials and businessmen, and he has also held talks with Turkish Cypriot leaders in northern Cyprus and London.

Jonathan maintains good contacts with the large Cypriot community in London, notably in Hackney, Haringey and Enfield and shares the aspiration of most of its members that there will be an equitable solution to the ongoing situation on the island, leading to the assimilation of all Cypriot citizens into the full benefits of EU membership.

Jonathan in the Czech Republic

Prague was the first place Jonathan went to 'under cover', during the Communist period, to meet church activists and members of Charter 77, the civic initiative involving people such as Vaclav Havel, Jan Patocka and Pavel Kohout. Subsequently, the Czech language service of the BBC World Service was one of the most frequent users of Jonathan's daily commentaries on global affairs.

Following the Velvet Revolution of 1989, many former dissidents assumed high government jobs, with Havel himself becoming state President. He maintained strong links with English PEN at a time when Jonathan was on its Executive, as another other Czech-born playwright, Tom Stoppard, continues to do.

Jonathan is following with interest the line taken by the current Czech Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, who argues strongly that there are no legal reasons to submit the new EU Reform Treaty to a referendum, asserting that the plans do not create any new basic framework, but merely modify the existing Nice Treaty.

Jonathan in Estonia

Jonathan first visited Tallinn after an ELDR gathering in Helsinki, well before the Estonian capital became a favoured destination for British stag-parties. Having Finland - whose language is very similar - as a sort of older brother and mentor within the EU has certainly helped Estonia integrate itself well into the European Union. That process has also been helped by the fact that Estonia has one of the highest levels of computer usage in the world.

It was thus particularly worrying when elements in Russia launched a cyber-war against Estonia early this summer, in the form of a denial-of-service attack on several Estonian websites. This was apparently in retaliation for the decision by the Tallinn government's decision to relocate 'The Iron Soldier', a Soviet war memorial.

While deploring both official and unofficial muscle-flexing by Russians in the region, Jonathan is nonetheless conscious of the real grievances felt by Estonia's large Russian-speaking population and endorses international calls for the full respect of citizenship rights for minorities throughout the EU.

Jonathan in Hungary

Through the German Liberal foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, Jonathan got involved in international discussions in Budapest about Hungary's democratic transition towards the end of the Communist era. Despite the failure of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the country managed to be the first to partly westernise, and later led the way for change by opening its border with Austria.

Jonathan took a delegation from the British Group of Liberal International to Budapest for talks with environmentalists (the 'Blues') and political activists who would become members of new Hungarian Liberal parties, including the Hungarian Civic Union, Fidesz, which unfortunately drifted rightwards when it got into power!

Thanks to the Hungarian Embassy in London, Jonathan has participated in a number of seminars on Hungary's transformation into a market economy and its new roles within both the EU and NATO.

Jonathan in Latvia

Jonathan visited Riga during a tour of the three Baltic capitals in the run-up to the three former Soviet republics' accession to the EU. Later, in his role as President of the Diplomatic and Commonwealth Writers Association, he hosted a press lunch for the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, at the National Liberal Club in London.

In 1997, the historic centre of Riga was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites, because of its remarkable Art Nouveau buildings, a style Jonathan has been particularly interested in. But there is another, much older and splendidly restored part of the city, reflecting its importance within the Hanseatic League, in the 13th to 15th centuries.

More troubling is the pollution off Latvia's shores, which is now the focus of international activity. In modern times, the Baltic Sea has been turned from a pure water eco-system into a eutrophic environment saturated with nutrients, intensified by the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, which Jonathan wants to see reformed.

Jonathan in Lithuania

Jonathan was last in Lithuania in July, attending an international conference in Vilnius, on the challenges facing the democratic opposition in neighbouring Belarus. Through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Jonathan and other Liberal Democrats have been working on projects in Belarus, Macedonia and Moldova.

Vilnius is the jewel in the crown of Lithuania's cultural and historic legacy, but Jonathan has also visited Klaipeda (formerly Memel), which was largely destroyed in the Second World War, apart from an old fortress where Lithuanian nationalists were tortured during the worst of the Soviet years. Nearby is the curious (and polluted!) Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which is entirely surrounded by the EU.

Jonathan maintains good contacts with the large Lithuanian community in east London, and recently attended a large gathering at the Lithuanian church in Hackney, where a visiting Lithuanian Liberal MEP was speaking, urging Lithuanian immigrants in London to register to vote here.

Jonathan in Malta

When Malta applied to join the EU, Jonathan went on a short fact-finding mission to Valetta to familiarise himself with what is now the Union's smallest member state. There is no significant Liberal presence on the local scene, unfortunately, but the island's politics have sometimes provided good journalistic copy, not least when Dom Mintoff was Prime Minister.

Following the closure of Britain's Maltese military base, Mintoff formed strong ties with Libya. Indeed, it is the Libyan connection that has taken Jonathan back to Valetta in recent years, in between trips to Tripoli and Tunis.

One of Jonathan's particular interests is the Euro-Med partnership, which as it develops will strengthen the links between southern Europe and North Africa, through the definition of a region of common peace and stability, the establishment of a free trade area, and the rapprochement between peoples through social, cultural and human partnership - in which Malta has been in the vanguard.

Jonathan in Poland

Jonathan's first night in Poland was spent in a Carmelite convent in Krakow. This was still in the Communist era, and there wasn't a hotel room to be had in that historic city. Jonathan was researching the life of the Jewish-born Carmelite nun Edith Stein, who perished at Auschwitz — the next stop on Jonathan's itinerary. Her birthplace, Breslau, has since become Wroclaw, and yet more extraordinary changes have taken place with the collapse of Communism and Poland's entry into the EU.

Jonathan later made the pilgrimage to Gdansk, cradle of Solidarity, and to the genteel neighbouring seaside resort of Sopot. But recently, his attention has been focussed on Warsaw — he was last there in early September — researching the authorised biography of the artist Feliks Topolski.

Poland today isn't fertile ground for Liberalism. While welcoming Poland's growing prosperity and young Poles' enthusiasm for the EU, Jonathan is monitoring the pronouncements and policies of the 'Terrible Twins' and allied groups with concern.

Jonathan in Slovakia

Though Jonathan was not present at the 'velvet divorce', when Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia, he was subsequently invited to Bratislava by the Slovak government to interview officials about the new country's ambitions and especially its ambition to join the EU.

Partly under the influence of the late writer and human rights campaigner Siobhan Dowd (whose obituary Jonathan wrote for the Guardian), he became interested in the issue of discrimination against the Roman minority in Slovakia and neighbouring countries, some of whom have ended up on the margins of society in London.

Recently, residents of eastern Slovakia have raised with Jonathan their concerns about the tightening of controls on the border with Ukraine, which has disrupted family contacts and casual trade. While he understands the need for increased security and immigration controls at the EU's external borders, he is concerned that the high cost of Schengen visas is curbing some eastern Europeans' freedom of movement.

Jonathan in Slovenia

Jonathan's involvement with post-independence Slovenia has mainly been in the cultural field. He represented English PEN at a writers' conference at Lake Bled and has attended literary events in Ljubljana.

As a journalist, he has maintained a close working relationship with the Slovenian government press and information service and attended Slovenia's PR launch at the London Press Club. Through the London Embassy, he has participated in a number of artistic events as well as the opening of the new embassy premises in Westminster by the Foreign Minister and the celebrations marking Slovenia's entry into the euro. The latter was a remarkable achievement for a 'new accession' state, interestingly leapfrogging Britain!

In 2008, Slovenia will face another huge challenge when it takes over the six-monthly rotating presidency of the European Union. While Jonathan shares Slovenes' delight that their economy and democracy have matured so quickly, he firmly believes that the new EU Reform Treaty is correct in replacing such a short-term 'buggin's turn' practice among EU member states.

Jonathan in Bulgaria

Jonathan travelled through Bulgaria en route to Turkey when he was a sixth-former and found himself back in Sofia a few years later, transiting to Zimbabwe on Balkan Airlines. He was glad he had learnt Russian at school, as at that time Bulgaria looked East, not West.

All that has changed with Bulgaria's entry into the EU, though the country has a lot to do to raise living standards up to the EU norm, as well as tackling corruption and local mafias. However, tourism is booming, as Jonathan discovered on a working trip to Varna and Nesebur.

The main Bulgarian Liberal party caters largely to the Turkish-speaking minority, a reminder of the fact that this part of the world used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. The rights of minority communities and the EU's encouraging the celebration of Europe's cultural and linguistic diversity are issues close to Jonathan's heart.

Jonathan in Romania

Shortly after the fall of Ceausescu, Jonathan hosted in London a young, ambitious Romanian Liberal, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu - who is now the Prime Minister, which only goes to show where ambition and determination can get you! The last ELDR Congress was in Bucharest as a result.

However, Jonathan's familiarity with Romania itself came through an invitation to present a paper on minority language cultural rights at a literary conference in Sinaia, after which he hired a car and toured the country with a novelist friend, from Transylvania to the painted churches in Bucovina. Subsequently, his book "André and Oscar" was translated into Romanian.

Jonathan has worked closely with the Romanian-speaking population in neighbouring Moldova, and has twice been to Chisinau, most recently identifying possible collaboration projects between local Liberals and the UK LibDems and doing a 'BBC 'From Our Own Correspondent' piece from a rural monastery.