So, this afternoon to the Rossi Contemporary Art Gallery for the vernissage of my better half’s vitrine (picture). The gallery owner, Francesco Rossi, likes to juxtapose the work of three or four different artists in the different spaces that he has at his disposal. I liked everything on show but I would like to dwell a little on Belgian architect, urbanist and artist, Luc Deleu, whose work consists of ‘propositions’ for urban life. One of them – city beehives – caught my eye, for it is something followers of this blog will know the European Economic and Social Committee has already implemented (there are two hives on our roof). But consider some other of his ideas: mobile monuments; car free noons; visible telephone wiring and electricity cables (as in much of Asia); protection of weeds; urban fish ponds… Deleu’s ideal world might be less practical than our real world but I suspect that it would be good fun!

Tomorrow is a big day for my better half, who has a vernissage at the Rossi Gallery ( http://www.rossicontemporary.be/ ) in the afternoon. Being married to an artist is an immense privilege because I have a ringside seat at the act of creation. I know what the strange hieroglyphic in the picture was originally and where it is to be found. I also know how much research, reflection, soul-searching and sheer hard work goes into the transformative act that every artist undertakes. And I know how courageous artists are in working to their authentic convictions. Rossi Contemporary, Rivoli Building, ground floor, N° 17 690, chaussée de Waterloo (Bascule), BE-1180 Brussels (gallery entrance = rue De Praetere), three till seven p.m.

This morning, in a simple ceremony at La Chapelle de la Resurrection, the European Economic and Social Committee commemorated the life of Baron Simon-Pierre Nothomb, the Committee’s fifth Secretary General (1992-1996), who passed away in March of this year. His widow and children were present. Among former colleagues in attendance were the sixth Secretary General, Adriano Graziosi (1996-1998) and Nothomb’s former Head of Private Office, now my Deputy Secretary General, Nicolas Alexopoulos. The latter reminded those present of the particular challenges that Simon-Pierre had faced, including most notably the creation of the Committee of the Regions in 1993-94 (a protocol to the Maastricht Treaty declared that the two Committees would be served by a common structure) and the 1995 accessions to the Union. Hugh Burton, a former director in the Committee, spoke of Nothomb’s firmness, inventiveness and sense of adventure. (He gave an example: During a hang-gliding trip, Nothomb spotted a house he liked. He landed, spoke to the owners and found that they were ready to sell. The house became what his family called his garçonière.). In my introduction (below) I explained that I had known two of Simon-Pierre’s brothers, Jean-François (met in Rome) and Charles-Ferdinand (in Brussels) and that what struck me most about the Nothomb family was their constant commitment to public service. Simon-Pierre lived his life very much in that tradition.

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At midday today the Secretary General’s team celebrated two birthdays, of Miguel and of Zoltan. As usual, a major attack was launched on my waistline and, as usual, the occasion and the participants were excellent examples of all that is good about Europe. Though we mostly happily forget the very special environment in which we work, I am always struck by the goegraphical and cultural  diversity that makes even a short office birthday celebration such a rich affair. Back row, left to right: Zoltan (Hungary), Jonna (Denmark), Martin (United Kingdom), Bernard (Belgium), Laura (Italy). Front row, left to right; Miguel (Spain), Anna (Slovakia), Fabrice (France). Not in the photograph: Julia, our current trainee (France).

This evening I went along to the farewell drinks party of Jürgen Schmehr (in the middle of the photograph), a Committee of the Regions colleague who has been working with the Committee’s Secretary General, Gerhard Stahl (on the right in the photo) and has been particularly involved in oiling the wheels of the cooperation agreement between the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee. It is in considerable part through Jürgen’s good, hard and loyal work that the mid term review of the cooperation agreement was so positive. In fact, Jürgen and I were once colleagues back in the European Commission, in DG Education and Culture. I was happy to attend as a friend and colleague but I hope my presence was also felt symbolically for, without exaggeration, Jürgen has been the personification of successful inter-institutional cooperation.

We had a most welcome visitor at the writers’ workshop this evening – Alice Jolly, a former member, who now lives back in the UK. Already an accomplished novelist, and having taken time out to try her hand at writing plays, Alice has just finished a third novel and is now polishing up the ms for publication. Alice is also a teacher of creative writing at Oxford University and we were all struck by her easy ability to critique perceptively and constructively. The success of several members who have recently left for other countries – Alice and Leila Rasheed back to the UK, Jeremy Duns to Sweden, makes me wonder whether a possible key to literary success might not be a change of scenery…

Back in Brussels, I spent this afternoon in a meeting of the Political Monitoring Group. This is the top level of the governance mechanisms that enable the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions to share a significant part of their human and financial resources (particularly translators, buildings and logistics) in Joint Services, thus generating considerable economies of scale and realising considerable savings for the taxpayer. The meeting passed off well, notwithstanding the fact that both Committees are having to tighten their belts in this period of austerity. I am always interested in the way the discussions demonstrate the specific authenticities of the two advisory bodies. As one would expect, representatives of local and regional authorities refer frequently to their experiences in the town- or city hall setting, whereas our members, not surprisingly, adopt a businessman’s or a trade unionist’s, or an NGO’s approach. The two approaches are clearly complementary. Recently, the two Committees have agreed to work together more frequently at political level and if these discussions on relatively technocratic issues are anything to go by, such joint approaches can only result in much richer contributions to the European Union’s policy-making debates, particularly in areas such as the Europe 2020 strategy, where the members of both Committees have their feet firmly planted in the real world.

Having explored the Southern city’s ancient streets and visited the House of the Dragoman Hadjigeorgakis, I made my way up Ledra Street and crossed over the Green Line into the North. The visitor is immediately struck by the clearly much lower level of prosperity. Many of the buildings seem to be crumbling, the cars are old, the streets are dirty and the rubbish bins are overflowing. Songbirds hang in cages outside the coffee bars. It felt like being back in some of the Turkish towns I remember from a backpacking trip in the rural south in the early 1980s. European structural funds are being disbursed on both sides of the divide and these oases of restructuring stand out far more in the north (a refurbished indoor market, built in the 1930s, caught my eye). There are two major architectural sights which, a little like the grand museums of Museum Island in the old divided Berlin, underline why this city should not be divided. The first is the beautifully restored Büyük Han, an authentic caravanserai and the second, its minarettes visible in my picture (taken from Debenhams), is the Selimiye Mosque, which was built as a cathedral and converted into a mosque in 1570. It still feels a little like a cathedral, but its interior has been painted white and its carpeted floor (oriented towards Mecca) means that the vast interior doesn’t generate hushed echoes but, rather, absorbs sound, leaving the stockinged visitor alone with her or his thoughts.

I shall never forget the impression the divided Berlin made upon me when I visited it in 1985. Nicosia, visitors are reminded, is the last divided city, and there is more than an echo of the old Berlin about the atmosphere. Indeed, there is something dreadfully fascinating about the fortifications (in my picture, the UN defences at the Paphos Gate), the eerie wastelands of the buffer zone, the quiet menace of the sentries in their pill boxes (who mustn’t be approached), the sandbags and barbed wire and the ubiquitous blue-and-white (UN colours) painted oil cans, the occasional UN helicopters overhead, the Turkish soldiers in their jeeps in the north, and the very different cultural atmospheres and evidently different levels of prosperity in the two halves of the city. I raced around, seeing as much as I could (including grabbing a cup of tea in the sixth floor café of the Debenhams store on Ledra Street, which affords all-round views of the city), and crossing over to the north. This, like Berlin and Vienna in their day, is so obviously a single city and the visitor can only be saddened by the continued division.

The figure in this illustration is from the Middle Chalcolithic period (3,400-2,700 BC) and is one of the many delightful treasures on show in the Museum. The classics, not to be missed, include the extrordinary array of clay figurines from the Agia Irini sanctuary, the statue of Aphrodite frequently used in publicity about the island (and therefore vaguely familiar), a magnificent larger-than-life bronze statue of Septimius Severus, the first Roman emperor of African origin (and who died on campaign in Britain), and the group of three limestone lions and two sphinxes found in the Tamassos necropolis south of Nioosia in 1997. But there are lots of other beautiful things to see, from exquisite jewelry through to ancient forms of writing (I found the 6th century BC cypro-syllabic inscriptions particularly beautiful) and (my favourite) an 8th century BC throne made of wood and covered with ivory plaques found in the ruins of Salamis. Somebody should write a poem about the anonymous kings who once sat on that throne!