4 Genesis and Structure of European Bureaucratic Capital: Senior European Commission Officials In the preceding chapter, we showed that the forming of the European civil service as a group did not rely, or not only, on the socialization of individuals to the organizations, but more generally on forming a common habitus related to the social position as Stand member. This allowed us to show that the modalities of interiorizing the group’s common values varied considerably. There are different ways of taking on the function, and interiorizing the common habitus depends on a set of variables. While studies so far have often insisted on national origins (Hooghe, 2005 and 2012; Kassim et al., 2013), we seek here instead to underscore the potential impact of the social trajectory, and thus the variations between the social position conferred by the position of European civil servant on the one hand, and on the other the original position and/or probable position outside of the European civil service. The ‘oblate’ status as per Bourdieu, in the sense here of someone who does not belong to the order of the transnational elite and finds him or herself promoted to it, is from this point of view a key variable in adhering to the group and to its common values such as they are constructed by its spokespersons. The more the institution recognizes and consecrates the individual in a position that promotes him or her © The Author(s) 2017 D. Georgakakis, European Civil Service in (Times of) Crisis, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51792-6_4 93