Meetings ahoy
When you go past London Heathrow on the M 25 you can sometimes see ten or more planes lined up in the sky, coming in to land. As I look out on the rest of this week, the ‘sky’ looks similarly charged with numerous coming events. It starts this morning at 08.30 with a meeting of the enlarged Presidency and this afternoon there’s the Bureau. Dotted between those are a business lunch and a business dinner and various other meetings. Tomorrow, we have a heavily charged plenary session, starting with a visit from the new President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek. Then our President, Mario Sepi, will be giving out the Committee’s annual civil society prizes. That’ll be followed by a set-piece debate on the Lisbon strategy and economic growth. At lunchtime, we’ll be watching a film about climate change, The Age of Stupid, and after the plenary there’s a Swedish Cultural Evening and after that I have another engagement. On Thursday the Committee will be debating and adopting a pre-Copenhagen resolution on climate change and following that up with a thematic debate on the topic together with a Swedish minister, Jöran Hägglund, and Jo Leinen, President of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee. And on top of all of that we have plenty of ‘normal’ opinions to be debated and adopted. It’s my job in part to help all of those ‘planes’ come in, one after another, land and clear the runway for the next event. Here’s to smooth landings!
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