Bloomsbury Square

Today I did a quick allez-retour to London primarily to meet up with an FCO official with overall responsibility for relations with the EU institutions. The discussions, all cuisine interne, were useful and productive. I walked from St Pancras to my rendezvous, near Millbank. This was not to avoid picking up swine flu in the Underground but because, after four days spent sitting in back-to-back meetings, I badly needed some exercise and fresh air. (In any case, little good did it do me – I went back in the evening with a cold.) Walking through Bloomsbury, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. As a teenager, when I went ‘up to town’, I always arrived at Euston and headed down towards the West End through Bloomsbury. Europe has so many beautiful cities. It’s just a shame you can only live in one of them at a time.

The plenary went on until the Thursday evening. It’s part of a trend. We had assumed that there would be less legislative referrals from the European Commission in this, an electoral year. But, in fact, the opposite has occurred. The Committee has been asked by the Commission to give its opinion far more than last year. As our President, Mario Sepi, points out, this does not mean that the Commission has suddenly become over-active but, rather, that in a time of economic and social crisis it naturally is more likely to seek the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee. Our next plenary session, straddling the end of September and the beginning of October, is going to be similarly busy. As SG, it’s always a nice feeling when the President declares the meeting closed and thanks the services for having produced a smooth-running plenary session. Yes, it’s a challenge, but one the services most ably rise to.

A busy and rich plenary session continued early this morning with a visit from the Swedish Minister for Employment, Sven Otto Littorin, speaking on behalf of the incoming Swedish Presidency of the European Union. Although he didn’t underestimate the extent of the crisis still unfolding, Littorin delivered an upbeat message to the plenary. In effect, he was reporting back on the discussions that the employment ministers had held at their informal Council meeting in Jönköping. The question of labour market exclusion had been at the heart of their concerns and there had been much swapping of experiences – bad as well as good, Littorin pointed out; ‘we should all learn from each other’s mistakes as well as copy best practices.’ Littorin’s basic point was a simple but strong one; it is better to keep people in employment than to have them, in one form or another, as reluctant dependents. Littorin unfolded a sheaf of notes before speaking but, like Joe Borg the previous day, was clearly the master of his dossiers. He punctuated his speech and replies with homely examples based on his personal experiences. I noted down one saying of his grandmother; ‘Work creates health and wealth.’

In the evening, back at the Committee’s headquarters building, our five Maltese members laid on a wonderful celebration of Maltese music and culture, accompanied by delicious food and wine. It was a great spread and made me nostalgic for those beautiful islands that I have now visited quite a few times. Our Maltese friends also laid on some great music; a couple of Maltese musicians, Sasha & Sam, who performed their own compositions. They’re just starting out so if you go to their websiteyou can listen to everything we heard for free. It’s here. Good harmonies. I particularly liked ‘Alone in your bed.’ A wonderful evening to cap off a busy day. Thank you, Malta!

Later in the afternoon the plenary session hosted the European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, Joe Borg (he is Maltese). There was a wide-ranging debate covering both the integrated maritime policy and the review of the common fisheries policy. In an extraordinary performance, Borg replied to each and every question put to him in great detail and without referring to notes or the officials who had accompanied him. He was a real ‘master of the dossiers’. Brilliant stuff.

The plenary session of the Committee got under way in the afternoon with a joint presentation by the outgoing AICESIS President, Janos Toth, and the incoming AICESIS President, Antonio Marzano, reporting on the Budapest meeting of the previous week (see various posts). I had invited my predecessor, Patrick Venturini, who is now the SG of AICESIS, to sit beside me on the podium, and I can’t resist posting a photograph of that!

Madi Sharma

This morning  we hosted a well-attended press conference to draw attention to a Committee own-initiative opinion (adopted by the plenary in the afternoon) drafted by Madi Sharma (UK, Employers’ Group) on the protection of children from travelling sex offenders. The opinion makes for chilling reading. Conservative statistics for 2006 calculate that out of 842 million travellers in that year, 4.5% were sex ‘tourists’ (a term Sharma thinks is misleading, by the way) and 10% of those were paedophiles. Flanked by her President and SG, Sharma called for urgent action and we immediately set the example by signing before the journalists two decisions establishing ethical travel policies for our members and our staff. You can read the opinion here. One of Sharma’s main calls is for all EU member states to sign and ratify UNICEF’s Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. The opinion names and shames those member states that haven’t yet signed.

Yesterday and today have been thick with preparatory and coordination meetings: the standard Monday morning meeting of the Directors is always advanced to an earlier time in plenary session weeks and followed by a pre-plenary meeting with all of the services concerned with the plenary session. Then, yesterday afternoon, there was a follow-up meeting of the enlarged presidency. This afternoon the Committee’s Bureau met. Its agenda included an important debate on inter-institutional relations. If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified and implemented then the Committee will have a major role to play in providing the structured dialogue with civil society foreseen in the Treaty, but even if it is not, there are important challenges facing the Committee in this period of a new Parliament and a new Commission. It was a rich and productive debate. Also, right at the end of the meeting, there was a decision of major importance for me. The Bureau agreed to the appointment of a new Director for Budget, Finance and Verification, Mr Freddy Smet (that’s him between me and the President in the photograph, taken earlier this year during the awards ceremony for those  having completed 20 years’ service in the EU institutions). The Directorate he will now head up is a new one, created expressly as part of the reform package approved by the Bureau back on 2 December 2008. I have been effectively acting as Director since I took up the cudgels on 1 October last year. I have also been acting as Director of Human Resources. To get one of those two Directors in place is such a relief for me. Beyond workload considerations, though, it means that I now have a full time paid-up member of the reform process to take matters forward. Good news!

I had to slog away all day and until gone nine in the evening in the office. In the afternoon I got BBC Radio 5 on the internet and worked to the accompaniment of the commentary on the test match (cricket) between England and Australia at Cardiff. The last forty minutes of the match were tense and thrilling stuff. At lunchtime, England looked set to lose, but towards the evening the two tail-enders, Jimmy Andersen and Monty Panesar, managed to hang on and deny Australia’s attack for the last 69 balls to secure England an improbable draw. It was great entertainment. Afterwards, though, I was wondering how one could justify such a description about a draw to somebody who knew nothing about the game. It’s a good illustration of the depths of cultural identity. To most red-blooded Englishmen the word ‘cricket’ immediately conjures up images of village greens and the crease and the wicket and rollers and the rope boundary and whites and pads and willow bats and white-painted screens and tea and sandwiches and cakes and beers and Wisden and Almanacks and umpires and a secret shared vocabulary and gentlemanly applause combined with the occasional piece of extraordinarily violent and vicious behaviour with a rock-hard leather-coated ball. I’d better stop there; I’m beginning to sound dangerously like John Major.

I have written before (21 March post) about the extraordinary renaissance in Andrew Motion’s poetry. There was another wonderful example, ‘The Next Life’, in today’s Guardian newspaper. I cannot find a link on the Guardian‘s website, but Andrew Motion has his own website here. He is wonderfully on song.