It was cheering to read in this morning’s Financial Times that ‘Turmoil brings out best in Europe’. Sunday’s Eurozone summit meeting, an institutional first, kicked off what promises to be an eventful but reassuring week on the financial front. Diplomats in Luxembourg yesterday were apparently comparing the financial crisis and the EU’s response with other seismic events, such as the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. This thing is big, then; really big, but Europe is managing in a way that no individual member state would be able to manage.

An article alongside reports that ‘French brawn and UK brains lead way.’ Of course, in rugby it would be the other way around.

Nearer home, I attended my first EESC Budget Group meeting as SG. It was another bitter-sweet occasion, with Alexander Graf Von Schwerin standing down as Chairman and Seppo Kallio taking up the challenge. Establishing sound, transparent and reliable budgetary and financial processes has to be a Secretary General’s first priority. To borrow a metaphor, the house is basically in good shape, but it needs some re-wiring. Seppo and I have our sleeves rolled up…