Today, at the end of a very heavy week, I took two deep breaths of fresh air, one literal, and one literary. The literal breath of fresh air was an early-morning walk in the arboretum at Tervuren with the dog. I am posting a picture I took on the way back. Walking along this avenue of beech trees, their upper branches limned by the rising sun, felt like walking along a cathedral nave and, I am sure, such scenes subliminally inspired the anonymous architects of perpendicular gothic fan vaulting (Bath Abbey, for example). At lunchtime I went to a poetry reading organised by the Northern Ireland Executive office in Brussels. Two young poets, Miriam Gamble and Ben Maier, did not disappoint. The latter is also a singer and musician and sang for us as well. Gamble’s poetry is rich in arresting concepts. One that has stuck in my mind is ‘an underwater tear’. Maier, coincidentally once Gamble’s student and then her tenant in Belfast, builds structures (a series about the circus, for example). The one that stuck in my mind was a sort of invented, poetic, history of cotton. I walked back on this balmy day feeling refreshed and stimulated and ready to attack the dossiers and issues lurking balefully in the office…

Yesterday’s sad news about a good and much-liked Belgian lawyer colleague, Daniel Jacob, was paralleled this morning by sad news about a good and much-loved lawyer uncle-in-law, Pierre Van Gehuchten, who passed away today at the ripe old age of 89. A quietly devout and modest man, he adored his family and music and had an impish sense of humour and an infectious laugh. His presence at any gathering, no matter what the age of the participants, guaranteed a good time and a fair share of belly laughs. Pierre came from a distinguished family of academic achievers, particularly in medecine. As a passionate young democrat he became a resistance fighter and then a soldier. I shall never forget his – characteristically modest and self-deprecating – account of the liberation of Wavre in September 1944. The occupying forces had at last decided to leave quietly, their tails between their legs but their heads held high. A young Belgian hothead could not resist giving them the metaphorical equivalent of a kick up the backside. The Germans turned back in cold anger and Pierre lost many of his friends in the ensuing firefight. ‘It was a mess,’ he would say, giggling dismissively. But if you pushed, he would tell you how one of his best friends died alongside him, spouting blood and guts on the bank of a stream. Ever after he told me that episode I imagined I could see sadness in his smile. He undoubtedly loved mankind but knew also of what man was capable.

Our plenary session this time is being held in one of the European Parliament’s meeting rooms in the Jozsef Antall building (one of the ways in which both consultative bodies save the taxpayer money is by borrowing the Parliament’s or the Commission’s meeting rooms for their plenary sessions). This particular meeting room is named after Italian politician and European founding father Alicide De Gasperi, and the back of the room sports two huge photographic portraits of him, plus another, famous, picture of him on the cover of Time magazine. Once upon a time, before professional life got quite so busy, I had the intention of editing a series of books on various cross-system political phenomena. So far, only one of the titles, Leaders of Transition, has seen the light of day. Another title in the projected series is Political Survivors and I realised that I was looking out from the podium at a good example of the phenomenon. De Gasperi was not only the Prime Minister of eight successive coalition governments in post-war Italy. Born in the Tyrol (1881), he became active in the Austrian Social Christian movement and was imprisoned as a demonstrator in Innsbruck before later (1911) becoming a member of the Austrian Reichsrat. In 1919 he founded the Italian People’s Party and served as a member of the Italian Parliament (1921-24). In 1927 he was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison by the Fascist regime. In 1943 he created the Italian Christian Democracy Party and in 1945 he became Prime Minister for the first of eight times. He was an embodiment of continental European history.

This morning the Committee’s plenary session held a thematic debate on the Common Agricultural Policy reform package with the European Commissioner responsible for agricultural and rural development, Dacian Ciolos. Once again, the Committee’s expertise was much to the fore, with some twenty knowledgeable speakers, many of them farmers, or working on behalf of farming organisations, taking the floor to provide constructive criticism of the Commission’s proposals. And, once again, in Dacian Ciolos the Committee had a knowledgeable and passionate interlocuteur who clearly valued the exchange and was, like Siim Kallas the previous day, determined to give detailed answers as far as he could. This, as Ciolos put it, was the whole point of his presence; to build understanding and support through open and constructive debate. And once again I thought to myself that this was, in effect, the provisions of Article 11 at work.

There was terribly sad news today of the loss of a fine Belgian colleague, Daniel Jacob, Deputy Director General of Human Resources in the European Commission. After serving at the Belgian Bar he joined the European Commission’s Legal Service. I first got to know Daniel well in the 1980s when, as bright young thing, he served in the private offices of, successively, Stanley Clinton-Davis and Bruce Millan. Then, in the late 1990s he became Neil Kinnock’s Deputy Head of Private Office just as I was writing Neil’s biography. He would later be Philippe Busquin’s Head of Private Office, before stints in DG Administration and Personnel, then DG Research, then DG Administration and Personnel again. He had excellent English, compendius knowledge about British politics, forensic intelligence and a great sense of humour. I interviewed him about six months ago, with a view to updating the biography. Since there was nothing he liked better than swapping political anecdotes (never salacious), we had a great time. Daniel’s first specialisation was labour law and he was intimately involved in the current reform process. We have lost a very fine colleague.

This afternoon the Committee’s plenary session held a thematic debate, in the presence of the responsible European Commission member and Vice-President, Siim Kallas, about the Commission’s White Paper on a ‘Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a Competitive and Resource Efficient Transport System’. Also on the agenda was the Committee’s response to the White Paper, an opinion prepared by Jean Coulon (Employees’ Group, France) and Stefan Back (Employers’ Group, Sweden). In a nutshell, the Committee expressed general support for the Commission’s ambitions, but it also expressed criticism about what it sees as the mismatch between the goals, the methods needed to achieve them and the budgetary resources available. The Committee’s opinion also criticised the strategy’s lack of specific shorter-term measures. Pointing out that the White Paper would be followed up by more detailed proposals, Kallas demonstrated the value he attaches to the expertise of the Committee’s members by giving detailed answers to the many points made. This, as the next post will show, was the first of two such well-informed dialogues. Such debates are, to my mind, concretisation of the provision of Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty for all EU institutions to enter into structured and open dialogue with organised civil society.

This afternoon’s plenary session got under way with a commemoration of our former President Mario Sepi, who was snatched away from us unexpectedly on 10 October. Current President Staffan Nilsson, who worked with Mario when he was the Employees’ Group President and then when he became President of the Committee, led the tributes. After a minute’s silence Georges Dassis, current President of the Employees’ Group was followed by Henri Malosse (President of the Employers’ Group) and Luca Jahier (President of the Various Interests Group) in paying tribute to a man who, in addition to his many professional and political achievements, was truly a good friend. Solemn and intensely sad though the commemoration was, I have chosen to illustrate this post with a happier photograph. As Secretary General, I worked very closely with Mario, and for me one of his great and most attractive attributes was his sense of humour. In the picture, Mario, as President, has just awarded himself a medal for long service. (We had forgotten to ask ourselves who would give the President himself his reward.) Typically, the result was not a grimace of irritation but a giggle, followed by a spontaneous outburst of laughter all round. Caro Mario!

I have written several times before about the organic rhythm of the Committee’s meetings cycle. This is common to all of the institutions and organisations I have worked in and for. Among other things, this reliably-structured approach means that processes can be carefully planned and prepared. Thus, in addition to the traditional preparatory work for the plenary session this afternoon’s Bureau meeting held an orientation debate for the preparation of the Committee’s 2013 draft budget. In this context there are still a lot of ‘known unknowns’. Still, it makes good sense for the Committee to debate and build the drafting process thoroughly. For small, skinny institutions, ‘cuts’ very quickly go to the bone. The Committee has to be ready to identify areas of activity which, whilst ideally desirable, may have to be reduced or (temporarily) abandoned or, alternatively, find other ways of doing things.

At lunchtime today, just before the Bureau meeting, I accompanied Vice-President Jacek Krawczyk to the opening of a ‘Poetry from Poland’ exhibition entitled ‘Pick a Poem’. The itinerant exhibition, which is for the moment housed on the sixth floor of our flagship Jacques Delors building (just outside the Bureau meeting room), is inspired in part by the London ‘poems on the underground’ initiative. Our ever-excellent communication department has produced a series of postcards, with the original Polish poems on one side and the French and English translations on the other. Here’s a taster: ‘Silence’, by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese. Even a big city may occasion/silence where you can hear last/season’s leaves push along/the sidewalk, prodded by wind,/in their never-ending journey to destruction.

At the Committee we are once again into the rhythm of a plenary session week. This morning I chaired the weekly management board meeting and then our ‘pre-session meeting’ (of all the services involved in the forthcoming meetings). And this evening I attended a meeting of the enlarged Presidency (the President, two Vice-Presidents, three Group Presidents and the Secretary General), where we discuss the political preparation of the week. This week the enlarged Presidency also had a discussion in the context of the Committee’s annual civil society prize, which will be awarded by the President during the 7 December plenary session, for we are, according to the rules governing the prize, the selection committee. We have a bumper harvest of candidatures this year. The administration has worked fast and efficiently to weed out any ineligible candidatures, and now we must start reading through the entries to draw up our short lists. To know more about the prize, go here.