I hotfooted it back from the Parliament for a working lunch with the Committee’s Vice-President with responsibility for Communication, Anna Maria Darmanin, our head of communication, Peter Lindvald Nilsen, and two very special guests, Claus Sorensen, Director General of DG Communication in the European Commission, and Reijo Kemppinen, Director General of Communication and Transparency in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union. They had come to the Committee to be keynote speakers in the opening (afternoon) session of a seminar for the press officers of the civil society organisations from which our members are drawn. One of the major themes to be addressed was the challenges represented by new technologies, and not just the social media. We had an excellent discussion about whether institutions and organisations should regulate the use by their officials of such social media as Twitter and Facebook. Reijo, whom I first met when he was the spokesperson of the Finnish permanent representation in the mid-1990s (a time when the then new Member States were fighting hard to introduce more transparency into the EU’s decision-making processes), argued strongly that further regulation was unnecessary, since all EU officials were subject to their contractual obligations and the staff regulations. As I would have expected, a breath of fresh Nordic air! Afterwards, I attended the opening session, where he repeated his point of view (so I am not revealing confidences). Claus Sorensen, meanwhile, stressed the twin needs for a decentralised approach and for civil society organisations to be involved. As with the Citizens’ Agora, the sorts of questions and answers that arose in the opening session promise a rich and interesting two days’ work!