And so to work. The extraordinary meeting of the Bureau (the decision-making body) of the Employers’ Group was meeting in Ajaccio to discuss the theme of ‘education and the needs of the new economy’. Our hosts were the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry. My job – a great privilege and pleasure – was to chair a panel discussion on the theme. The panel was composed of the EESC’s President, Staffan Nilsson, and the President of the Employers’ Group, Henri Malosse, and three EESC members (Vladimira Drbalova, Madi Sharma and Stéphane Buffetaut) and the Director General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, Jan Truszczynski, and two local representatives; Antoine Aiello, President of the University of Corsica, and Pierre Anchetti, President of the training committee of the Ajaccio Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It was a hugely interesting and enjoyable morning. Aiello and Anchetti were so passionately committed to their cause that they radiated dynamism and optimism. But there was also great chemistry in the room: ‘Europe’ had come to Ajaccio but had come to listen, rather than preach. Somewhere in the discussion I quoted Monnet about how what was required was neither optimism nor pessimism but determination. Well, there was plenty of determination in that meeting room today and it was great, just great, to drink in the atmosphere.

My hotel room looked out over the old town towards the port. I had left the window and the shutter open in order to listen to the singers in the streets (they continued into the small hours). At five-thirty I was awoken by a commotion in the port. A massive cruise ship was just arriving. (In my picture you can see it dwarfing a much prettier visitor.) Now wide awake, I donned my running shoes and went for a jog around the bay. By seven o’clock the sun was already hot and the sea was just too tempting. Crossing the railway lines and clambering down a sea wall I found a secluded beach that I had all to myself. I stripped off and swam, then dried off in the sun before running back to the hotel. If only every day could start like that!

Corsica has a special place in my affections – impossible to explain why in a short post. But there is one song that, if ever I were asked to be on Desert Island Discs, would have to be among ‘the eight’ and that would be Un soffiu di libertà. My flight got in at gone eleven this evening so I missed out on the welcoming dinner, but I joined a few EESC members in the restaurant where they had dined. They had been entertained by three Corsican musicians who had retired to a back room and started practising. I found myself as the last guest in the restaurant (we’re talking the not so small hours). I went through to the back room and asked the musicians about Un soffiu di libertà and on the spot they played and sung it to me and afterwards wrote out the chords and the lyrics. It was one of those moments of unforgettable privilege that, like my moments alone with Magritte’s Empire of Light, sometimes occur and will always be treasured.

This morning, together with my counterpart in the Committee of the Regions, Gerhard Stahl, I participated in a very significant meeting of the Political Monitoring Group which is a political-level joint body that oversees the two Committees’ management of their Joint Services. As I never tire of pointing out, the Committees have set a shining example of how to realise synergies and economies of scale by pooling their resources in such areas as translation, logistics and buildings. Today’s political monitoring group approved a largely positive mid-term review of the Cooperation Agreement (which runs for seven years in total) and it also approved the text of a joint pamphlet that will show not only how the Committees achieve economies of scale through pooled resources but also how, by working together, they realise synergies with other institutions. It was, then, a highly significant and very positive meeting.

This evening we saw a living legend. By the time I had properly woken up to music Paul Simon was well into his third cycle of popularity with the eponymous Paul Simon (1972). By then Tom and Jerry and Simon and Garfunkel were long behind him and yet There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), Still Crazy After All These Years (1975),  and the great Graceland (1986) were still before him and now, with So Beautiful or So What (released in April) he has demonstrated that, at the ripe old age of 69, he is still able to write and perform great music. His concert this evening was simply wonderful. He has a tight band of musicians and the rolling set of songs (he was on stage non-stop for over two-and-a-half hours) was well constructed to vary rhythm, period and genre. Throughout his energetic performance he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself and yet he is midway through a punishing schedule of daily concerts (tomorrow he’ll play Paris, the day afterwards, Rotterdam, and so on). The first of his encores was a simple acoustic version of The Sounds of Silence. This is somebody else’s recording elsewhere but it gives an idea. Songwriters would give their eyeteeth to write such a single perpetual classic – he has written many; truly, a living legend.

This afternoon the EESC’s Budget Group met and I participated in a number of important discussions on its agenda, including those concerning the 2011 budget’s implementation, the state of play on the 2012 draft budget and the start of the drafting process for the 2013 budget. The Budget Group also agreed with the administration’s suggestions concerning the 2012 amending budget to anticipate Croation accession in 2013. These are ‘interesting times’, in the Chinese sense of the term. The European Commission has just tabled its proposals for administrative reform but we won’t know the outcome of those for some time to come. Also, we don’t know yet what our final 2012 budget will look like (and, with rumours of ‘provisional twelths’, we may even not know by the time we have to table our 2013 draft budget) and yet the Commission proposes 2012 as the base year for the implementation of its proposed reforms (to be implemented as of 2013). At the same time, we know already that we need increases in 2012 and 2013 to deal with Croatian accession. Last but not least, we won’t know the indicative rate of inflation for 2013 until the beginning of next year (and then it is only an educated guess), and yet our rent payments (for example) are index-linked. Budgeting should be an exact science but under these circumstances and at this stage it necessarily remains something of a guessing game.

This morning I hosted a meeting of the Committee’s Directorate for Finance, Budget and Accounts and I invited along our Vice-President with responsibility for budgetary affairs, Jacek Krawczyk. The Directorate was gradually created after the Committee’s December 2008 Bureau decision to re-group all financial responsibilities under a single director and I felt it was time to have a meeting with them all to see how things are going but also to let them know that, even for those colleagues whose work is not so politically visible (our verifiers and accountant, for example), their work and conscientiousness are much appreciated. Each year the Secretary General has to sign off the accounts and each year those accounts are then audited by the Court of Auditors. It is thanks to these colleagues that I can happily sign off the accounts, safe in the knowledge that the Court never finds very much wrong with our financial management. Basically, thanks in no small part to these colleagues, we run a tight ship.

Every Monday morning I chair a meeting of the Committee’s management board. A top point on every agenda is the preparation of the next meeting of the Committee’s Bureau (12 July) and its plenary session (13-14 July). The July session promises to be particularly heavy. In addition to a large number of opinions to be debated and adopted the Committee will be hosting no less than three VIPs – by coincidence (we are at the beginning of the Polish Presidency), all of them Polish: Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament; Waldemar Pawlak, Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister; and Janusz Lewandowski, the member of the European Commission with responsibility for the budget. Managing such a rich and heavy agenda will require some procedural choreography but the session promises to be very interesting and rewarding, with our guests debating such themes as sustainable growth and, evidently, the 2014-20 multi-annual financial framework for the EU.

I listened avidly this evening to the first of two BBC Reith lectures, ‘securing freedom’, delivered in a clandestine recording by Aung San Suu Kyi about her pro-democracy campaign and in particular the inter-relationship between liberty and dissent. You can listen to the lecture here. It was a humbling experience, knowing how much she has sacrificed personally. ‘We have done as much as I think any party could do under the circumstances,’ she said at the end of her talk. If she has succeeded only in keeping dissent alive for dissent’s own sake then that, she argued, is an important achievement in its own right. In the ensuing question-and-answer session, a learned admirer in the audience, Timothy Garton Ash, observed that it frequently seems easier to rationalise the motives of those who cooperate with oppressive regimes than those who, like Aung San Suu Kyi, resist and yet, mysterious though it is, such spirited resistance is a vital democratic force. Aung San Suu Kyi’s lecture – calm, measured, rational – was in the best spirit of ahimsa and satyagraha and she certainly stands in the same ranks as Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.

One of my godchildren turned eighteen recently and this evening we celebrated her birthday in the garden of her house in a tiny Brabant Wallon village much as we have done every year for the past eighteen years. We are blessed to have quite a few godchildren. In a sense, they are like grandchildren – the godparents are there to spoil them! But, of course, that’s only part of the role. Basically, we are there for when we are needed. It’s a privileged position of trust and of responsibility and also, as this evening, of constant company. Much has changed over the past eighteen years, but sitting in that Brabant Wallon village garden this evening I realised that much – friendships, family – has also, happily, remained the same.