This morning I attended another meeting of Secretaries-General. This time it was the SGs of all the EU institutions. The meeting was hosted by the European Parliament and its SG, Klaus Welle. The SGs of the three main institutions see a lot of each other in bilateral and/or trilateral meetings, but these occasional meetings enable the heads of the administrations of all of the institutions to discuss common problems. What we discussed remains between us (though you can probably guess some of the themes). During the meeting I had a sense of déjà vu. It was the paintings on the walls in the meeting room. I sensed I had seen them somewhere else. And then I remembered. They used to hang on the wall of the Parliament’s old building in the rue Belliard, the building now occupied by … the European Economic and Social Committee. For a long time I worked in the Commission’s Secretariat General, following parliamentary affairs, and I spent an awful lot of time in the building in those good old days. Seeing the paintings again was like seeing long lost friends. We had a working lunch in a room from which we gazed down on the European Quarter and the old/new Belliard building. It was a sort of metaphor for how far the Parliament has come.

This evening I gave a talk to a great bunch of young Syracuse students. I told them, truthfully, that I have been giving such talks for a long time now, but that the ‘narrative’ of my talk has changed over time. If you talk to young people today about the avoidance of war or the maintenance of peace, they will of course recognise this as a noble end, but it no longer resonates in the way it once did. Real experience of war between most European countries is, thankfully, far away. But, then, if you seek to aspire, what might be the new narrative? I increasingly believe that we should start to return to the aspirations of the first federalists, who believed in world, rather than European, federation. It’s not going to happen on a world scale in the foreseeable future, but regional groupings are already evolving, many of them modelled on the European experience. Increasingly, humans face global challenges. What better than to evolve towards global mechanisms for global solutions?

One of her many successes

From the Cooperation Agreement I hotfooted it to the farewell drinks party for the Austrian lady, Antonia Kuehnel, who has until now been in charge of the Committee’s cultural activities. She is what is termed a ‘detached national expert’, seconded to us by her own national civil service and, sadly, it is now time for her to return to Vienna. Antonia has been the perfect colleague. Almost single-handedly, she has irrigated our corridors, meeting rooms and larger spaces with beauty and innovation; she has brought literary lunches to our terrace, she has brought striking images to our walls and she has made the Committee a better place to be for its members and its staff. Her colleagues in the communication department made a DVD for her to take back with her, and all of those who have worked with her, including me, were interviewed and spliced into the film. It’s a lovely way to pay tribute to a lovely person.

I spent most of this afternoon, together with my counterpart at the Committee of the Regions, Gerhard Stahl, in a joint meeting with the Directors and Deputy Directors of our so-called ‘Joint Services’. These meetings are regular occurrences and an obligation under the Cooperation Agreement that both Committees signed in order effectively to govern their pooled resources. So ,we discussed our joint budgetary policy, business continuity, a strategy for the maintenance and renovation of our buildings, personnel policy (our flexitime pilot project is going rather well) and preparations for the political-level meeting, the Political Monitoring Group, that caps our cooperation and provides political guidance. Inevitably, the meetings are a long slog, but the atmosphere is excellent and I persist in believing that our two Committees are setting an example to the other institutions.

John Monks

Yesterday evening I attended the John Fitzmaurice Memorial Lecture and listened to the wise words of John Monks, General Secretary of the European Trades Union Confederation. John concentrated his analysis mainly on the way British policy towards European integration was likely to evolve next year (you all know what I mean!). The UK is in a paradoxical situation. Sterling is not in the euro, for example, but some 60% of employees in UK PLCs work for foreign-owned companies. ‘The soggy case for Europe gets nowhere,’ he argued; ‘it’s got to be muscular.’ In effect, he was implying that British pro-Europeans should be preparing for a referendum even if there will not be one.  Following on from the Lisbon II referendum result in Ireland, I have met a number of exhilarated Irish colleagues who took time off to go back and fight the good fight. I would relish the prospect. On Europe, the devil definitely does not have all the best tunes. I met a Tory businesswoman in West Malling, for example, who was solidly pro-single currency because she was losing out to transaction costs and exchange rate uncertainties. We should all start limbering up!

I heard back from the Mayor, Sue Murray, this morning. My poem is on her blog. More to the point, the musical evening raised £ 1,000 each for the Pilsdon at Malling Community and Spadework. This is wonderful news and I am happy to have been a part of such a wonderful occasion.

The late, great Bill Shankly was once asked if football was a matter of life or death for him. He famously replied that ‘it is more important than that’. Well, there has been much in this morning’s news about a football match to take place this evening between Armenia and Turkey in the old Ottoman capital of Bursa. The Turks are determined to lavish hospitality on their visitors and both countries wish to use the match for – entirely laudable – diplomatic purposes. I hope the local fans share their aims. Anyway, I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that one football match triggered a war that left over 6,000 people dead. It was a 1969 World Cup Qualifier between El Salvador and Honduras. Hours after the match, this morning’s Financial Times tells me, the borders between the two countries were closed, the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa was attacked by fighter aircraft and the two countries fought a 100-hour war. I doubt whether this was quite what Shankly had in mind, but it does make you think…

This morning we had an important kick-off coordination meeting concerning the renewal process the Committee will undergo next year. Members are appointed, rather than elected, but nevertheless have fixed terms. The end of the current mandate comes in September 2010, with the new or re-appointed members taking up their duties in October. In these so-called ‘renewal’ processes we can expect a turnover of upto 30 per cent of our membership. In my opening remarks I quoted the old cliché about how you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So we’re starting early, because many of the things we want to do require long lead times (especially those requiring IT development or calls for tender). There were some thirty people in the room and we had a full agenda, but I was nevertheless able to bring the meeting to a close after one hour. This was primarily because the meeting was typically well prepared by my secret weapon, Super Anna, but also because everybody in the room came with positive ideas. Such meetings are a pleasure to chair and everybody in the room deserved a big pat on the back.

David O'Sullivan

I had lunch today with David O’Sullivan, currently Director General of the European Commission’s DG Trade. We have known each other since the late 1980s, when David was the parliamentary attaché in the private office of Peter Sutherland and I was working in the Secretariat General of the European Commission. David has had an illustrious career, including stints as Head of the Private Office of the President of the European Commission and as Secretary General of the European Commission. Originally, I had hoped to meet David before I took up the cudgels myself (I saw the then outgoing SG of the European Parliament, Julian Priestley, in the same context). But David travels so much and we have both been so busy that our chat has taken a year (and in the meantime we have met in various other circumstances). Nevertheless, leaving aside the trade-related aspects of our work (which we also discussed, of course), I found the meeting useful confirmation that the ‘survival strategies’ I have adopted are probably the best available. So here’s how you do it. Leaving travel aside, breakfast becomes the one guaranteed family meal in the day. You cannot escape the hours. You have to work weekends. You cannot help but neglect your friends. You must delegate all but the essential. Become aloof from senior recruitment procedures as soon as possible (massively time consuming). Above all, develop a stoic philosophy, based on the recognition that much of a Secretary General’s time is spent on fixing what isn’t working.

A beauty

On the run home N° 1 sprog had a second shopping spree in Canterbury. What a contrast with Bluewater! Real shops in real houses, many of them very old. Real sky overhead (and real raindrops). Gulls crying from the rooftops. And peals of bells from the bell tower of the cathedral. And not just any old cathedral. We paid a quick visit before dashing for the Shuttle. Canterbury Cathedral is, quite simply, a gem.