“…5 Everything has to start somewhere. From this perspective, the authors have developed systematic studies on agents who occupy or have occupied certain types of positions: Commission Director General de Lassalle, 2004, 2007b, c), director of the COE Secretary General , members of the European Parliament (Beauvallet and Michon, 2004;Beauvallet, 2007;Michon, 2004Michon, , 2006Marrel and Payre, 2006;Marrel and Godmer, to be published), permanent representatives (Chatzistavrou, 2004), lobbyists (Michel, 2006(Michel, a, b, c, 2007a, trade unionists (Wagner, 2005(Wagner, , 2006Verrier, 2006), journalists (Bastin, 2004;Baisne´e, 2007), scholars (Popa, 2007), political collaborators (Michon, 2006), and experts and officials (Robert, 2007). They are not so much concerned with finding out 'who is in charge' (although they do shed some light on this), but rather attempt to make out different types of careers and oppositions between the (social, if possible, national or international, educational, professional) dispositions of the agents who follow these careers.…”