The European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions together manage an innovative experiment in pooling resources so as to realise economies of scale. These Joint Services (particularly translation and logistics) were established by a Cooperation Agreement between the two Committees and their management is overseen by a series of inter-institutional bodies at administrative and political level. As a result, those parts of our management structures that are involved in these joint bodies see a lot of each other. On the other hand, those parts of our management structures that are not involved see very little of each other. This is only logical; they are, in effect, managing different institutions. However, my counterpart at the CoR, Gerhard Stahl, and I are convinced that even these ‘services propres’ should occasionally meet together in order to discuss joint challenges. Such was the case this afternoon. On the agenda were such issues as business continuity and electronic filing. They sound innocuous and uninteresting as topics, but behind them lie major strategic decisions about, for example, investment in software systems or decisions not to allow processes to diverge too sharply for common responses to be possible. The atmosphere was excellent, if critical, with a reassuringly healthy determination not to ‘over-bureaucratise’ matters.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting a very active young blogger on the EU scene, Julien Friesch. I admire immensely the energy and enthusiasm that people like Friesch (Jon Worth is another) put into what is in effect no less and no more than an integral part of the evolving democratic fabric of what Margot Wallström used to like calling ‘the European sphere’. Then, today, I met another young European communicator. Polly Akhurst is part of a networking organisation called ‘The Hub’. A simple idea, The Hub brings together people in a non-partisan context to meet up and exchange ideas and experiences. Faithful readers will perhaps also remember my encounter with RENA, an Italian version of The Hub, but with an explicit vocation to contribute to the democratic development of a country and of the Union. As a political scientist, I have often written about the decline in the paradigm of mass membership party politics in our democracies but increasingly I realise that those democratic forces are still ‘out there’ – they just express themselves in different ways, ways made possible in large part by rapidly evolving net-based applications. What I find fascinating about these developments is that they are ‘messy’ – by which I mean that they are organic and their evolution is unpredictable and uncontrollable (think of ‘viral’ videos). They are thus the antithesis of what public administrations like. Yet, as internet access spreads, that is the world where increasingly communication battles will be fought. Young, committed Europeans like Julien and Jon and Polly are the footsoldiers of the European ideal but, the thought occurs to me; in such a world, is there any place or role for generals? And since I used a picture of Uncle Sam, here’s a question: will there ever be an EU equivalent of Uncle Sam and, if so, what would s/he look like?

Claudio Magris

To the Goethe Institut this evening to hear novelist and philologist Claudio Magris in an exchange of views with Polish journalist Adam Krzeminski on the theme of ‘Europe – Utopia and Reality’. This was part of a series of events to celebrate the award to Magris of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Brussels hosts a series of very active cultural centres (Istituto Italiano, Instituto Cervantes, the British Council, and so on) and this was an example of what they do best. The exchange was loosely-structured and meandered over various themes, a little bit like Magris’s Danube. Here are some ‘soundbites’. Magris: ‘We have to battle our fear that Europe could be a risk for the smaller countries; only Europe can defend the smaller countries.’ Krzeminski: ‘What is the soul of Europe? We don’t know, but we know that without it we could not survive.’ Magris: ‘Even Europe’s islands cannot exist alone anymore.’ Krzeminski: ‘European peoples know less of their histories and that enables people to reinvent myths opportunistically.’ Magris (an Italian, from the wonderful city of Trieste): ‘When it comes to populism, Italy is the best; believe me!’ Krzeminski: ‘History is perceived increasingly as a series of events rather than a process.’ Magris: ‘The young take Europe for granted.’

Just before he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown published a series of pen portraits of his heroes in a book entitled Courage. This was undoubtedly from the heart stuff and, as Brown made clear in his introductory chapter, the courage of individuals such as Edith Cavell and Robert Kennedy had richly inspired him during his political career. Today I learn from the New Statesman that Brown’s last two acts as Prime Minister were to write to Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela, ‘two people who have inspired him hugely’. Since Brown has almost completely disappeared from the public stage and has expressed no desire to re-enter it, these could not be considered cheap gestures to the British electorate but, rather, deliberately supportive acts. Here, for the record, is the text of his letter to Aung San Suu Kyi: ‘This is one of the last letters I write as Prime Minister and I want it to be to you, to champion your cause for democracy in Burma and to say I will do everything I can support you. You are, for me, what courage is and I will fight for you to be free and your people to be free. Yours sincerely, Gordon Brown.’ To paraphrase Shakespeare,  ‘nothing became his political life as the leaving of it.’

Spot the SG

Yes, I did it again. I didn’t train as much as last year but, on the other hand, I had already done it once and so knew what was in store for me. Last year I started from the back and took things easy. My time was a more-or-less respectable two hours and thirteen minutes. This year I wanted to get under two hours, if possible. I ran a fast first ten kilometres but cramped twice in the second ten and so was delighted to come in on one hour and fifty-three minutes – a twenty minutes improvement! Last year I took my preparations seriously, laying off the booze the night before, getting an early night, eating pasta, and so on. This year, my preparation consisted of beer, wine, a barbecue and a late night. Who knows how much faster I might have been if I had drunk and eaten more and gone to bed even later? As to the atmosphere, it is a very special experience to be running down rue de la Loi in the midst of a sea of thousands of runners. The staggered start (an innovation this year) worked well. The race was as cosmopolitan as ever (click here to see a list of all of the nationalties represented) but most of the runners were Belgian and were doing what Belgians are best at; not taking themselves too seriously and having fun. Roll on 2011!

This evening I attended a surprise 50th birthday party for a friend and former squash team mate. A lot of our fellow dogs of war were present and a pleasant time was had by all. Our hosts were the epitome of English hospitality and even the bad weather was turned to humouristic advantage. Competitive squash used to be a very important part of my life. I spent a lot of time on court with my fellow old dogs, in training, in matches and, in our hey day, touring the country. It was great to see so many of them again for most, though not all, of us have long since hung up our rackets. Not for the first time, though, I found myself pondering the possible connection between squash and achievements off the court, for most of my squash contemporaries are now not just in management but senior and top management. I think there must be such a connection, for squash is about patience, endurance and spotting and seizing opportunities unhesitatingly when they arise.

I went to the College of Europe in Bruges this afternoon for a special commemorative event in memory of Jan Olaf Hausotter, one of my former students and a UN political affairs officer, who died on 12 January in the catastrophic Haitian earthquake. We were accompanied in the audience (composed, inter alia, of many of his contemporaries) by his parents and sister, Lilli, Dieter and Carola, and by his fiancée, Caroline, who was also in Port au Prince and herself only narrowly escaped disaster. It was my honour and privilege to make a few opening remarks and then introduce two remarkable guest speakers; Antonio Vigilante, Director of the UN and UNDP offices in Brussels, and Jack Christofides, Team Leader for Sudan in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations who had worked with Jan and, in a remarkable gesture, had flown from America to be present at the ceremony. The theme of the event was ‘Not a life like any other: international careers and personal sacrifice.’ For Vigilante, who has spent 26 of his 29 UN years working in the field, the United Nations is the institutional representation of a dream, ‘the best of dreams’. I am posting his speaking notes below. If you want to know why people like Jan give up comfortable lives and risk life and limb to help realise that dream, then you should please read Vigilante’s speech. It cannot impart, as he did, the idealistic passion that clearly courses through his veins and those of Christofides, but it will give you the sense of what it is that drives these people. The phrase that stuck in my mind was his rhetorical question about poverty in the world. If 2 billion people living in poverty and inhuman conditions through the accident of birth is not an emergency, then what is? He hoped that mankind would find the same resolve that had abolished slavery to abolish poverty. Jack Christofides began with some shocking statistics. In 35 seconds Haiti had lost 120 per cent of its GDP and  at least 170,000 of its people and over 40,000 orphans had been created. Such a shock to a country, any country, was without precedent. Christofides focussed on the risk side of the UN equation. Jan had been killed in a natural disaster but, Christofides pointed out, after the Baghdad bombing of August 2003, the UN and its officials, volunteers and operations came to be considered a legitimate target for many terrorists. Ever since then, Christofides argued, the UN had had to weigh in the balance ‘risk against rôle.’ He gave a graphic example of how (implicitly at great risk to himself) he had gone to negotiate with warlords in Mogadishu, ‘some of the vilest and most disgusting people you can imagine’, indeed, who had recently kidnapped several of his colleagues, in order to extract from them a commitment that they would not fire on UN volunteers distributing food aid to the starving population. The risk, Christofides felt, had been worth it because scores of thousands of lives had been saved. But the experience contrasted with a previous world in which no such negotiations would have been necessary. He finished with Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. I am sure that everybody listening in that lecture room in Bruges (where, coincidentally, Jan and Caroline had sat their oral exams in front of me), was profoundly impressed by the compassion and commitment of these two keepers of the flame of the UN’s humanitarian mission. It was a fitting tribute for Jan, RIP.

Continue reading

As I frequently write, it’s always a little invidious to single out one opinion from the many on the agenda but the last opinion debated in this May plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee was a very poignant one. Jacek Krawczyk (Employers Group, Poland) presented his opinion on the investigation and prevention of accidents and incidents in civil aviation. Jacek is himself a former LOT pilot and really does know what he is talking about but, of course the terrible poignancy came from the fact that his country has so recently experienced devastating human and political loss through an air accident (admittedly, a military plane but, still).

The key event of this morning’s session was the (first) visit of the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. The former Belgian Prime Minister comes from a Member State where the consultative function plays an important role and, promising to return later in the year, he clearly attaches importance to the Committee’s role at EU level (‘the European Economic and Social Committee is an invaluable asset to the Union’). He spoke passionately about the two extremely difficult balancing acts that governments and the EU are having to perform during the current crisis. The first is to reduce debt and deficits whilst not jeopardising growth which, almost paradoxically, is the only way out of the crisis. The second is to reduce deficits whilst maintaining high levels of investment in Europe’s comparative advantage – highly-educated human capital. Closing his speech, Mr Van Rompuy came out with the excellent exhortation that we should  ‘never under-estimate people’s sense of reality!’ Governments must not only act and react but, he insisted, they must also explain: ‘Politicians will not just have to explain budgetary cuts, they will also have to defend long-term socio-economic changes. We must keep this double focus.’

Professionalising...

The Committee’s May plenary session got under way this afternoon. It kicked off with a debate to follow up on last week’s Biennial Conference in Florence, before debating and adopting opinions on: the professionalisation of domestic work (rapporteur: Béatrice Ouin, Employees’ Group, France); collective civil society initiatives for sustainable development (Raymond Hencks, Employees’ Group, Luxembourg); EU-ASEAN relations (Claudio Capellini, Various Interests Group, Italy); international trade and climate change (Evelyne Pichenot, Various Interests Group, France); socially-responsible financial products (Carlos Trias Pinto, Various Interests Group, Spain); and an integrated approach to urban regeneration (Angelo Grasso, Various Interests Group, Italy). I wouldn’t normally list opinions in that way but there are two noteworthy aspects of this afternoon’s activities. The first is that, with the exception of Angelo Grasso’s opinion, all of the others are what we call ‘own-initiative’ opinions – in other words, opinions on topics where the Committee feels that the voice of organised civil society should be heard. (And the exception is what we call an ‘exploratory opinion’ requested by the Spanish Presidency.) The second is that every single one of these opinions was, for me, an excellent read. Now, I don’t mean that in a condescending way but rather that the afternoon’s collection of opinions was an illustration of the way in which our modern world has become so complex, with so many important developments or trends requiring attention all occurring simultaneously.