Back in the office, institutional life carries on. Today, I got a visit from these three gentlemen:  Johannes, the Head of the Budget Unit; Freddy, the Director of Finance; and Claus, the Committee’s accountant. Without these gentlemen, and the colleagues who work with them, I would rapidly and ignominiously disappear, for quite simply they make sure that the numbers add up and that every cent is accounted for and therefore provide me with the reasonable assurance I need to sign off the accounts each year. So today we went through the Committee’s annual general accounts for 2011 and the report on budgetary and financial management in 2011. This is an integral part of a Secretary General’s duties. I am there to make sure that the machine works smoothly in absolutely every respect, leaving my masters, the members, free to concentrate on what the activities of this week graphically demonstrated is a very valuable and specifically authentic role: making the voice of organised civil society heard.

The dog took us for a walk in the arboretum early this morning. It was a damp, dank, misty day and the bare branches of the trees were dripping constantly onto the leaf mould below. The foret de soignes is always beautiful, with every season having its colours. Despite the gloomy weather, we were treated to a spectacular display of vivid greens and yellows from the mosses that somehow come into their own in this period. The tree in my picture had painted its toes a bright emerald green. The walk was a perfect antidote to a very intense and immensely satisfying week. The intense and animated debates with Barroso and Almunia, the adoption of the resolution and a clutch of high-quality opinions, the signing of the Protocol of Cooperation, the Danish cultural evening… Quite a week for the Committee!

The February plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee was neatly rounded off by a visit from European Commission Vice-President Joaquin Almunia. Mr Almunia is reponsible for competition policy and he had come to the Committee primarily to talk about the Commission’s reforms on state aid. But in the ensuing question-and-answer session the debate inevitably spilled over into a broader discussion about the current economic situation and the vital importance of a functioning competition policy to enhance the prospects for growth. Indeed, the ongoing crisis was a dominant theme of the plenary’s work.  In addition to the resolution, important opinions were adopted on the European Commission’s Annual Growth Survey (rapporteur = David Croughan, Employers’ Group, Ireland), the social impact of the new economic governance legislation (rapporteur = Gabrielle Bischoff, Employees’ Group, Germany), involving civil society in financial regulation (rapporteur = Peter Morgan, Employers’ Group, United Kingdom), developing a people-orientated, grassroots approach to internal market policy (rapporteur = Jorge Pegado Liz, Various Interests’ Group, Portugal), markets in financial instruments (rapporteur = Edgardo Iozia, Employees’ Group, Italy), the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (rapporteur = Martin Siecker, Employees’ Group, the Netherlands), Europe 2020 Project Bond Initiative for infrastructure projects (rapporteur = Armin Duttine, Employees’ Group, Germany) and growth and sovereign debt in the EU (rapporteur = Carmelo Cedrone, Employees’ Group, Italy). Quite a session!

After the plenary session it was back to the Committee’s Jacques Delors headquarters building for a Danish cultural evening to mark the current Presidency of the Council of the EU. The evening was organised by the EESC’s Danish members and members and staff and guests were generously provided with delicious food and beer and great music in the form of Sinne Eeg, a top Danish jazz vocalist and her backing band. As Danish EESC member Sinne Conan (Employers’ Group) pointed out in her opening speech, this is the seventh time that Denmark has held the Presidency, but the last time was as long ago as 2002 and, of course a lot has happened in the meantime. But if ‘the EU needs a presidency to keep the wheels turning and to act as a bridge over these troubled waters’ (Conan), who better than the experienced Danes to keep matters on track?

This afternoon the EESC’s plenary session adopted a resolution on the economic and social situation in the European Union. The adoption of resolutions is provided for by the Committee’s rules of procedure but is a fairly rare occurrence. This is because all of the Committee’s mechanisms are geared towards achieving the greatest possible consensus and therefore most of its expressions (opinions, basically) are processed up towards the plenary session through preparatory and filtering mechanisms. A resolution, on the other hand, is typically adopted more rapidly, in response to a particular situation. Among the more eye-catching declarations in the resolution are an emphasis on the European Commission’s role, the importance of youth unemployment and the need for a bigger and increasing EU budget. The latter has been a consistent EESC position and reminds me of the 1977 McDougall Report’s recommendations. (The 1977 MacDougall Report, named after its chairman, an economic adviser to the CBI, was produced at the request of the Commission. It studied public finance in the context of the EEC’s move towards greater integration, concluding that the Community should be spending 2-2.5% of member states’ total GDP in a pre-federal stage; 5-7% in a federal small-public-sector stage; and up to 25% in a federal large-public-sector stage. )

Which brings me neatly on to the Protocol on Cooperation between the EESC and the European Commission. I have posted a few articles about the ongoing negotiations but today the Presidents of the two institutions formally signed the new Protocol and Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, who had fronted the Commission’s side in the negotiations, was also there to join in the celebrations. The first Protocol was signed in 2005, in the wake of the Convention and when the Constitutional Treaty was still expected to be ratified. This version is designed to take into account the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions, particularly with regard to participatory democracy. Other innovations/improvements include strengthened strategic political dialogue, acknowledgement of the role played by the network of national economic and social councils, codification of cooperation on communication and information, consolidation of the role the Committee plays in external relations and improved inter-institutional programming.

 This afternoon, after EESC President Staffan Nilsson’s mid-term address, the Committee welcomed European Commission President José Manuel Barroso ,who spoke cogently about the way forward for the European Union. The past world will never return, he argued, but without integration Europe doesn’t count. He quoted Alexis de Tocqueville: ‘History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.’ The EU was one of those originals. He knew from his travels that other areas of the world were looking to see whether Europe would rise to the challenge. He spoke about the tragedy of youth unemployment. He called for a ‘dialogue of truth’. Europe needed both discipline and growth. He then listed the many ways – inter alia, a genuine single market in services and digital technology – in which growth could be encouraged. His draft speech can be read here. There followed a truly fascinating debate, with Barroso staying well beyond his scheduled time (causing all sorts of planning problems for us – a ‘price’ well worth paying, of course). Henri Malosse (President of the Employers’ Group) argued that the EU institutions must address themselves directly to the people and the EU must give the young a vision of a positive future. Georges Dassis (President of the Employees’ Group) spoke about the ‘Sisyphean task’ of convincing the people of the need for European integration. Luca Jahier (President of the Various Interests’ Group) declared that ‘we are all Greeks because we are all Europeans.’ Those are just a few soundbites. Barroso was passionate in his response. Here’s a soundbite from him: ‘What I find worse than the xenophobia of the extremists is the pessimism of the pro-Europeans.’ At the end, having declared the Committee’s role ‘essential to the legitimacy of the Union’, Barroso thanked the Committee’s members ‘for your comments, criticisms and support. I enjoyed my visit to the European Union.’ Those who listened in to the debate would have had no doubt that what they had just witnessed was the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 11(2) (namely, an open and transparent dialogue with organised civil society) in action.

The EESC’s Bureau held a very productive meeting this afternoon and evening. As always, the meeting was in part about the routine of preparing Wednesday’s and Thursday’s plenary session although, even then, not all is ‘routine’; the Committee will be hosting the European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso and Vice-President Joaquin Almunia and signing a new cooperation protocol with the Commission and debating the crisis and adopting a resolution. In addition to these political discussions, the Bureau also discussed the Committee’s draft budget for 2013 and approved a set of Guidelines governing the use of interpretation. Basically, the provision of interpretation is expensive and the Committee is constantly seeking ways of reducing costs through better planning and discipline in meetings.

Addicts that we are, we tonight reached the end of the second season of The Wire. The scriptwriters (primarily David Simon) have done it again in writing into and then out of the series a wonderful character (see this post); on this occasion Frank Sobotka, a Polish-origin leader of a dock-workers’ union, who comes off worse in a power struggle with fellow Polish origin police Major Stan Valchek. Sobotka is a classic paternalist who cares about his men and about their jobs. The port basin is silting up. He needs to work the system to get the basin dredged and the big ships back. That means bribes, paid for by theft from the container port, but always ‘clean’ crime (and never drugs or people trafficking). What fun they had writing this character! Here he is, philosophising about his wrongdoing; ‘I knew it. I knew I was wrong. In my head I thought I was wrong for the right reasons.’ And here he tries to justify his workaholism to his neglected son; ‘It was all work, Zig, even when it wasn’t.’ And here he echoes my Cambridge, Massachussetts, cab driver (see this post)’s analysis of the American economy: ‘You know what the problem is? In this country we used to make shit, build shit. Now we just put our hands in each others’ pockets.’ I shall miss him!

Once again the EESC is at the beginning of a busy Bureau and plenary session week and once again the well-oiled machinery grinds into motion: early morning management board meeting, followed by the ‘pre-session’ meeting (of all services involved in the plenary session) and, in the late afternoon, a preparatory meeting of the enlarged Presidency (the President, two Vice-Presidents and the three Group Presidents, together with the Secretary General). We are now over half way through the current two-and-a-half year mandate and, at the political level, it shows, in the entirely positive sense that close working relations and mutual understanding have been consolidated, thus enabling the Committee to work effectively at what it does best: fostering consensus.