Yesterday and today have been thick with preparatory and coordination meetings: the standard Monday morning meeting of the Directors is always advanced to an earlier time in plenary session weeks and followed by a pre-plenary meeting with all of the services concerned with the plenary session. Then, yesterday afternoon, there was a follow-up meeting of the enlarged presidency. This afternoon the Committee’s Bureau met. Its agenda included an important debate on inter-institutional relations. If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified and implemented then the Committee will have a major role to play in providing the structured dialogue with civil society foreseen in the Treaty, but even if it is not, there are important challenges facing the Committee in this period of a new Parliament and a new Commission. It was a rich and productive debate. Also, right at the end of the meeting, there was a decision of major importance for me. The Bureau agreed to the appointment of a new Director for Budget, Finance and Verification, Mr Freddy Smet (that’s him between me and the President in the photograph, taken earlier this year during the awards ceremony for those having completed 20 years’ service in the EU institutions). The Directorate he will now head up is a new one, created expressly as part of the reform package approved by the Bureau back on 2 December 2008. I have been effectively acting as Director since I took up the cudgels on 1 October last year. I have also been acting as Director of Human Resources. To get one of those two Directors in place is such a relief for me. Beyond workload considerations, though, it means that I now have a full time paid-up member of the reform process to take matters forward. Good news!
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