This afternoon I attended a meeting of the European Economic and Social Committee’s Budget Group, chaired by Jacek Krawczyk (Poland, Employers’ Group – picture) in order to make a first presentation of the Committee’s draft 2014 budget. We are still a long way out and yet such is the way that the European Union’s budgetary procedure works that we will have to send a final draft of our 2014 budget to the European Commission by the end of March 2013. And we still have to deal with a number of ‘known unknowns’ (at the moment there is still no agreement on the 2013 budget, for example, though we have a pretty good idea what it will look like). Nevertheless, we can already have a clear picture of how the various building blocks of the budget will be structured (meeting legal obligations such as salaries and rents, for example) and our political masters (the Bureau, the Budget Group)  have already given us clear guidelines as to how the overall budget should look. It is, as I said to the Budget Group’s members, a sign of the EESC’s maturity and its sense of responsibility that this drafting exercise has been carried out in a perfectly consensual and collegial way. As I never tire of pointing out, our members have a unique authenticity derived from the fact that they spend most of their time back in the member states, in their organisations. They know how much it is hurting out there and are determined to show restraint, responsibility and solidarity and we, as an administration, are determined to support them.

Today the European Economic and Social Committee hosted the closing conference of the European Year of Active Ageing. The European Union is experiencing a major demographic challenge in an ageing population. This situation raises questions in a number of social and economic areas, but also represents opportunities for new social, economic and technological developments. The closing conference of the EESC Coordination Group of the European Year 2012, opened by EESC President Staffan Nilsson, was designed to give EESC Members having worked on the topics of this European Year the opportunity to share their conclusions of the with decision-makers and stakeholders. Topics covered during the conference included: healthy ageing and the needs of older citizens; changing the image of age – changing the learning paradigm; older people’s involvement and participation in society; humanising the working conditions of older workers; the contribution of ICT technologies to active and healthy ageing; and adequate, safe and sustainable pensions. In the picture is Renate Heinisch (Germany, Various Interests Group), a former MEP, one of the EESC’s more active members and representative of the Federal Association of German Senior Citizens’ Organisations. (See programme here.)

We were back in my hometown, London, at a dinner party this evening to celebrate a dear friend’s 50th birthday. The friend and her husband are both journalists and there were several other journalists among our fellow guests, including a representative of the regional press. The Leveson Inquiry into the behaviour of the British press published its final report and recommendations just two days ago and, as could be imagined, there was some interesting discussion at the table about the findings and the recommendations. What immediately became apparent was that there are a number of subtleties and nuances in the Inquiry’s recommendations that have not been teased out in the political debate and media coverage to date. To my left was a friend who is a renowned expert on New York infrastructure. She was eloquent on how short-sightedness cost the city dear. Simple measures such as putting generators at the tops of buildings rather than in the basement and building floodgates at subway entrances would have helped spare the city many of the inconveniences that occurred when Hurrican Sandy hit. And, yes, there was talk about the European Union, particularly following on from Tony Blair’s 28 November speech to the Confederation of British Industry. His concluding paragraph understandly generated a lot of media attention: ‘Europe is a destiny we will never embrace easily. But it is an absolutely essential part of our nation remaining a world power, politically and economically. It would be a monumental error of statesmanship to turn our back on it and fall away from a crucial position of power and influence in the 21st Century.’

We took the motorway to Calais this morning, on our way to the UK. In French Flanders the motorway passes a town called Hondschoote and there is a sign for travellers referring to a battle that took place here in 1793. Each time we pass the sign I vow I’ll look it up and this time I actually remembered. I quote: “The Battle of Hondschoote took place during the Flanders Campaign of the Campaign of 1793 in the French Revolutionary Wars. It was fought during operations surrounding the Siege of Dunkirk between 6 and 8 September 1793 … and resulted in a French victory under General Jean Nicolas Houchard and General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan against the command of Marshal Freytag, part of the Anglo-Hanoverian corps of the Duke of York.”  The Wiki entry makes for interesting reading. The French out-numbered the Hessian and Hanoverian soldiers by more than two-to-one and by the end of hostilities (chillingly, the two armies were within ‘stabbing distance’ of one another) more than five thousand soldiers lay dead. The French Commander, Jean-Nicholas Houchard, aware that his ragged troops were exhausted, preferred not to send them chasing after the Duke of York’s orderly rearguard and for this and other alleged acts of ‘cowardice’ he was later arrested, tried and guillotined. In the overall scheme of things, this was just yet one more relatively minor skirmish, but the presence of Hondschoote, a stone’s throw from Dunkirk and at the head of the First World War Western front is just another demonstration of the way that, for far too long, Europe was a battlefield.

I promised a separate post about Philippe Buron-Pilâtre.  Primarily a journalist by profession, Philippe is, as the English would say, a larger-than-life figure. I have no doubt that, were you to place him in any gathering, he would, with his anarchic but always good-humoured and charming wit, change the dynamics for the better.  Philippe is also a living historical link, for in 1783 his great-grandfather, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier , was the first man to fly in a hot air balloon (Montgolfier’s first success) and, in 1785, he was, more tragically, the first man to die in an air crash, at Wimelle, near Boulogne, whilst attempting to cross the English Channel in a hot air balloon. Philippe very kindly gave me a dedicated copy of the book he wrote about his illustrious ancestor. The story of his great-grandfather would have been enough to keep me fascinated throughout our dinner yesterday evening but I learned that, in addition, Philippe is himself not only a hot air balloonist but the organiser of an annual hot air balloon rally near Metz that is rivalled only by a similar rally in the New Mexico desert near Alberquerque. If you leave aside Icarus and Leonardo de Vinci’s fabled exploits with hang gliders at Fiesole, Philippe’s great-grandfather was probably the first man to fly. Earlier this year, at the Smithsonian in Washington, I gazed on the original Wright Flyer. Meeting Philippe has, in a way, closed the circle; man has come so far, so fast – and he is still accelerating!

Over an agreeable lunch I learned more about the Lorraine region. In particular, Raymond Bayer explained to me how the region has maintained the special status of established religions. Thus, the two forms of Protestantism (Lutherism and Calvinism), Judaism and the Catholic church all benefit from state support and their priests, pastors and rabbis are paid by the state –  they are assimilated to the status of state officials. Natives of Lorrain benefit from special religious holidays but can also be punished for blasphemy. And they have maintained a Bismarckian system of social security. Fascinating! Europe in all its cultural richness and diversity. Afterwards, I just had time to visit the cathedral of St Etienne and admire its extraordinarily high nave and the stained glass windows by, among others, Chagall. There was one more place I wanted to visit; St Pierre aux Nonnains. The building began life (in the fourth century AD) as a Roman gymnasium but was later converted to church use and it is here, apocryphally, at least, that Gregorian chant was first developed. Normally, the building, which is now used for occasional events, is closed. My luck was in; some technicians had opened the door and tolerated my presence. I imagined the Benedictine monks working out how to write down their new sound but all too soon had to dash for the station and my train back to Brussels.

To the Lorraine Economic, Social and Environmental Council this morning to ‘give evidence’ to the Council’s Forward Studies Section. The invitation came through the good offices of Roger Briesch, who is a member of the Section, which is currently preparing a study on Lorraine, citizenship and 2030. I was invited to present the European angle on citizenship, which I did through the perspective of a number of important recent EESC opinions, including the Jahier opinion on participatory democracy, the Gobins opinion on 2013, the year of the European citizen, the Sigmund opinion on the citizens’ initiative and the Jahier/Dassis opinion on the cost of non-Europe, all of which I have blogged about previously. Citizenship is a concept of particular importance to the Lorraine, which is a trans-frontier region that has suffered long-term economic decline. Without Schengen and the euro the situation would be far worse. Every day some 110,000 Lorraineans (out of a population of +/- 2 million) cross frontiers to work. About three-quarters go to Luxembourg, some go even further to Belgium and about 25,000 go to Germany (9,000 to Saarburcken alone). With a weather eye on western Germany’s ageing and declining population, the region is encouraging its young to learn German, since Germany will in future be a growing source of employment. In such a region, the complementary concept of European citizenship makes a lot of sense.

To Metz this evening. Tomorrow I will be ‘giving evidence’ to the Forward Studies Section of the Lorraine Economic, Social and Environmental Council. This evening I dined with the EESC’s former President Roger Briesch (to my right in the picture), the President of the Forward Studies Section, Raymond Bayer, and a Vice-President of the Lorraine Council, Philippe Buron-Pilatre (on the left in the picture). The fate of Florange’s two blast furnaces is in the balance these days and who better to speak authoritatively in this context than Roger, a born-and-bred steel worker? He was my first President at the Committee (in 2003) and we have been good friends ever since. The dinner-table conversation ranged enjoyably far and wide. I shall post a separate post about Philippe, who has an extraordinary past and a special hobby. He is also a passionate follower of Americana and our meal was given a special frisson for the fact that it was taking place literally a few metres away from the officers’ mess where the Marquis de Lafayette ate his last meal before heading off to America to fight against the British in the American revolution.

This morning the EESC’s Secretary General (aka me) and the Director of Human Resources, Gianluca Brunetti, offered a small thank you breakfast to the members of the electoral committee who worked so hard both to organise and oversee the 20 November Staff Committee elections and then stayed very late thereafter to count the votes. All went well, though the President of the Committee, Luis Lobo, will make several recommendations for practical improvements and adaptations in the Committee’s final report. All of this work is done on a purely voluntary basis. Without it, our local democracy couldn’t exist.

This evening the EESC’s President, Staffan Nilsson, and I said thank you and farewell to a number of colleagues leaving on their well-earned retirements. Tradition has it that the Secretary General says a few words about each retiring colleague (prepared by their colleagues and always full of warmth and humour) before the President hands over a certificate and a commemorative tray. It is always a bitter-sweet occasion. This time, it seemed to me, we were losing a lot of important people and personalities and also an important part of the Committee’s collective memory. It would be insidious to single anybody out for special praise because everybody in the picture has done a lot of good and hard work for the Committee and richly deserves a long and fulfilling retirement. However, I would like to write just a little about the lady standing to my left in the photograph, Anick Carer. Anick, French, and who will retire at least in part to her beloved Bretagne, first worked in the Committee in 1969. That’s right: 1969. Anick has therefore known and worked with every single one of the eight Secretaries-General of the Committee to date and innumerable Presidents. When I write that I sense we are losing an important part of the administration’s collective memory, that is what I mean. That is also what I mean when I write that our colleagues, each and every one of them, deserve a long and fulfilling retirement. I always find the occasion a humbling experience.