The European Association of Competent Authorities

The weirdly named European Association of Competent Authorities (EACA) seems to be doing all it can to show it is anything but competent.

This is deeply worrying given that its role is to promote the safe and sustainable transport of radioactive material.

To be fair, my assessment of the EACA is based solely on their website, and given that as far I know there are no recorded cases of a radioactive spill in Europe or elsewhere, they are probably competent in their core role.

But if you going to claim to be competent, it is a reasonable expectation that you would be so in all areas of your operation, including your showpiece website.

This is not the case.

For a start, the EACA home page has a panel with an ever-changing array of supposedly important information. I say supposedly because it changes so quickly there is no chance of anybody reading a panel before it changes—unless they are prepared to wait for it to cycle around again.

Then there is this, again on the home page:

“The transport of nuclear material has been successfully and safety undertaken for over 50 years without serious incident yet the transport of nuclear material continues to attract public attention, though it can be said often the public attention is not for reasons of public concern about the safety of transport.”

Really? I guess that apart from the use of “safety” it makes some kind of sense, though it is not immediately obvious and could have been structured better.

However, it is the word competent that draws my attention. It seems a strange word to use in such a context. To me, describing someone or something as competent just gets over the line as faint praise, though to describe my local council here in the Far North as competent would require a massive improvement on their part and a change of management.

 It is perhaps an irony that whilst competent is faint almost opaque praise, its antonym “’incompetent” is a devastating indictment of anybody so described.
The latter is clearly more important and aggressive than the former.

However, to return to the European Association of Competent (though not great) Authorities, maybe they should be congratulated for their restraint in not over-selling themselves. And congratulated, too, for their honesty.
It would be a little more comforting however to have someone a little more than competent handling that radioactive stuff.

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