Earlier today the European Parliament approved the draft 2011 budget. This followed on the heels of a Council decision concerning adjustments to EU officials’ salaries. If you had been in the corridors of the EU institutions you would have heard a huge collective sigh of relief. We have avoided the uncertain prospect of so-called ‘provisional twelfths’ from January onwards and, because the two decisions were taken still within this budgetary year, most of the feared potential problems related to scrabbling around to find credits to pay the backdated adjustment have either been avoided or can be dealt with through transfers. But institution watchers should note that the way in which the new Lisbon Treaty procedure is beginning to materialise is quite different from the rather technical way in which the annual budgetary procedure has worked until now. Basically, there is more politics in it and the Heads of State or Government, through brokerage in the European Council, now also have a role to play. As an institutions ‘anorak’, I find these developments interesting. But as the Secretary General of a smaller institution, I find them worrying. Where, and in what way, can the members of my Committee make their voice heard? It’s not exactly flies to wanton boys stuff, of course. Nevertheless, it has definitely felt over the past two months as though our fate was in the hands of the gods…