At midday today I met with Klaus Welle, Secretary General of the European Parliament, to discuss ways in which we could further enhance our two institutions’ cooperation in the specific context of the European Economic and Social Committee’s consultative function. It is no exaggeration to state that the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions have quietly revolutionised working relations between the two institutions, not just in the context of participatory democracy (where the EESC has provided a flanking role for the EP’s Agora initiatives), but more generally in regard to the Parliament’s legislative function. In a whole series of policy areas the Parliament now consults the Committee before embarking on its legislative work. As an advisory body, the Committee anyway has a vested interest in getting its opinion in upstream of the legislative process. But the Parliament also has to plan its legislative work and therefore needs to know with certainty when the Committee will deliver its opinion. That in turn means adapting and adjusting working methods (given that the institutions have to work with translation and interpretation deadlines). Today’s meeting was therefore about fine tuning our growing cooperation.