The current mandate of the EESC is almost at an end; next week will mark the last Bureau meeting and the last Plenary Session. This week and last week saw a flurry of ultimate Section meetings, the last meeting of the Consultative Committee on Industrial Change and the last meetings of the Budget and Communication Groups. As my waistline can faithfully attest, I tried to get to all of the farewell bashes. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with all of the outgoing chairpersons (not all of them are returning) and I shall particularly miss the two outgoing Vice-Presidents, Seppo Kallio (responsible for budgetary matters) and Irini Pari (in the picture, responsible for communication). Together, they have achieved a huge amount, from wholesale reform of the Committee’s budgetary mechanisms and procedures through to major advances in terms of publication and web policy and – Irini’s favourite – involving school students in simulations. I shall miss them, but I am also much looking forward to working with their successors. This turnover of officeholders is in the very nature of the Committee, but for me, as a still relatively new Secretary General, it is a first, bitter-sweet experience.

To Antwerp, for the third meeting of the EU-Brazil civil society round table, a permanent body for dialogue and cooperation between the EESC and the Brazilian Council for Economic and Social Development. The Round Table is yet another example of the growing tendency for the EU to flank its economic and political relations with civil society dialogue. On the agenda this time were two burningly topical subjects: social cohesion (particularly in the context of the current economic crisis and its consequences) and food security, with a final declaration expected to be adopted tomorrow. The meeting took place in a fascinating building, the Sint-Felixpakhuis, graciously put at the disposal of the Committee by the City of Antwerp. This old warehouse now houses the city archives but the architect has very cleverly kept the original features. On the other side of the warehouse is Napolean Dock (yes, built at his instigation). In the distance (on the left in the picture) is the old terminus building of the Red Flag Line, which is going to be converted into a museum about the process of emigration to the United States (over six million people sailed to New York from Antwerp). It felt as though I had somehow come full circle, for in early July I visited Ellis Island (New York) and remember well the Red Star Line posters advertising the Antwerp-New York passage.

Are we in Brussels or Strasbourg, boss?

Yesterday evening I and my Director of Finance raced to Zaventum and flew down to Strasbourg in time for a spot of supper. This morning at eight we met with our (Finnish) Vice-President, Seppo Kallio, at the European Parliament’s headquarters building. At eight-thirty we met with the Parliament’s rapporteur on the (2011) budgets of the EU’s institutions, Frau Helga Trüpel, accompanied by a gaggle of officials, and by nine-thirty we were on our way back to the airport, after an amicable and frank exchange. By midday we were back in our offices in Brussels. Flying visits can hardly get more flying than that. Still, it was an entirely worthwhile trip. The Parliament’s rapporteur has a particularly important role to play this year, since we are now in the post-Lisbon world of a single reading, followed by a conciliation procedure in which the ‘other institutions’, such as the European Economic and Social Committee, will not be able to defend themselves directly. All the more reason, then, for preparatory political dialogue.

Rifkin in thought...

Today and tomorrow the Committee is hosting a conference, jointly organised with, among others, the Council of Europe, on the theme of ‘Cultures and the Policies of Change’. The keynote speech this afternoon was delivered by Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and author of a number of ‘zeitgeist’ books, including The European Dream. As one fairly frequent speaker watching another, I could only admire his delivery, keeping an audience’s attention for over an hour, speaking authoritatively and in a perfectly structured fashion without consulting any notes. His basic thesis, a worrying one, is that humankind is probably on the verge of a steep decline because it is so dependent on finite and dwindling energy sources. The combination of over-priced oil and the increasing effects of climate change could tip our civilisation into inexorable decline and, ultimately, oblivion. All, however, is not lost. We are empathetic animals by nature, he argues, and the time has come to switch from geopolitical consciousness to ‘biosphere consciousness’. This switch must be accompanied by a new global cultural discussion and narrative for the human race together with a five pillar approach to energy in the developed world: renewables, local energy production through intelligent buildings, energy storage, the democratisation of energy through an ‘intergrid’, and a switch to electric transport. This was a sort of An Inconvenient Truth with knobs on! Rifkin provided much food for thought, in any case. It was an intellectually-challenging way to start the week.

We spent the weekend in London, where one of my cousins on my late mother’s side of the family was getting married. Over the past five years the family has suffered a number of bereavements, as my parents’ generation has gradually grown old and dwindled away. There are just two representatives of that generation left now, though, thankfully, both are in fine fettle. But it was a wonderful change for the cousins to be meeting up for the joyous occasion of a wedding, rather than the sad series of funerals that have punctuated recent years. Getting the cousins together is a major logistical exercise, with various branches travelling from San Francisco, Cape Town, Prague, Brussels and the Isle of Skye. (Only ill health prevented the Australian contingent from attending.) So we were determined to make the very best of the occasion. It was good to see second cousins (the generation beneath us) getting on so well and the evening’s celebrations included a great live band in which two cousins performed brilliantly. The formal part of the proceedings took place in Islington Town Hall and the festivities in what used to be Finsbury Town Hall. I am always interested by civic architecture and here were two fine examples. There was a plaque in the Finsbury Town Hall commemorating Dadabhai Naoroji, the first British Indian MP. He refused to take his oath on the Bible, preferring the Zoroastrian Avesta. You can read about him here; a fascinating example of a politician straddling two countries and two systems.

Somerset House before the Embankment was built

This morning we visited the Courtald Institute in Somerset House. Both are well worth the visit and it would be easy to spend a morning sitting watching the 55 dancing fountains in the elegant courtyard. The Courtald is, quite simply, a gem. A small, eclectic collection, it boasts a number of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings – Cezanne, Degas, Gaugin, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Seurat, Van Gogh – that would be recognised worldwide (Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergere, for example). But the collection ranges from the 14th to the 21st century and houses some exquisite lesser-known works. We were particularly taken by a sublime Gothic polychrome sculpture of a Madonna, the Lady’s alabaster cheeks slightly flushed, as though she were a little bit embarrassed by all the attention. To close, here’s a throwaway fact, taken from the programme notes for Picasso’s Yellow Irises (1901). That year Picasso was commissioned to provide 64 paintings for an exhibition of his work and so he painted three pictures day, day after day, including the Yellow Irises. I wonder what we would make of an artist and his output if he or she were to do that today…

Early this evening we went to the ever-excellent Goethe Institute to watch a screening of ‘Sergio‘ to celebrate World Humanitarian Day. The 2009 documentary film is based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power’s biography, Sergio: One Man’s Fight to Save the World, and revolves around the story of United Nations diplomat, Sergio Viera de Mello, who worked for the UN for more than 34 years and was ultimately killed in the Canal Hotel Bombing in Iraq on August 19, 2003. It’s an immensely touching account of the extraordinary career of a gifted, charismatic, committed example of all that is best about the United Nations. Juxtaposed and interspliced with this is a sadly chilling account of the bombing and of Viera de Mello’s lingering death, entombed in the ruins. One of the film’s revelations is that Viera de Mello, normally a cheerful, smiling man, was in a pensive state that day for the reason that he was about to make several speeches criticising the US occupiers in Iraq for being too brutal. Although the UN Mission and de Mello himself were there with the blessing of President Bush, he felt that they would otherwise risk seeming complicit, rather than maintaining the UN’s honourable traditional stance as objective and honest broker. What a terrible irony, then, that he should have been assassinated by a movement that saw no distinction between the US and the UN. The other interesting facet of de Mello’s philosophy is that, although he had a long spoon, he was prepared to sup with the devil. Samantha Power gave an eloquent justification of this approach in a TED talk you can see here. This echoes the views of Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s one-time special adviser and a key player in the Northern Ireland peace process, that, no matter how repugnant, if you want to find peace you must sooner or later open communication channels with your enemy.