This morning I attended the opening session of the eighth China-EU Round Table, opened and hosted by the EESC President, Staffan Nilsson. The round table has now reached a sort of cruising speed. The institutions and participants know each other well and a structure and a relationship of mutual trust and respect and good humour has been established within which such sensitive issues as the impact of the financial crisis on social dialogue and the rights of the child (both on the agenda this time) can be discussed frankly and productively. Such dialogue gives both sides the chance to avoid equating size with monolithism. It’s always invidious to single out speakers but I thought that, in his opening remarks, Chinese Ambassador Song Zhe was particularly eloquent on this theme: ‘I often say that because China is so far away, our friends in Europe often see China with the help of a telescope. yet more often than not, the telescope we count on betrays the reality with distorted images.’ One distortion, he continued, is to see China as a developed country only just behind the United States: ‘People are no longer able to see our numerous developmental challenges and the fact that we are still behind 100 countries in terms of per capita GDP.’ A second distortion sees China through its past ‘as a closed and conservative state with rigid system and institutions. Such a situation prevents people from appreciating the remarkable progress we have achieved…’ Dialogues, he concluded, help reduce difference, build agreement and promote cooperation. Today’s meeting provides a graphic illustration of that.

Sadly, the ‘bulldozer’ has passed away after failed repairs to a ripped aorta. America and the State Department have lost a stalwart practitioner of the ‘darker arts’ of conflict resolution. The essential paradox Holbrooke embodied was that he was thoroughly pugnacious in pursuing his ends, which were nevertheless always to bring about peace. I saw and met him once, in Bologna, at a SAIS event. He spoke, without notes, for some forty five minutes giving a cogent and intellectually lucid analysis that was laced throughout with the realpolitik of somebody who had been at the cutting edge. There was more than an echo of the philosophy of the UN’s  Sergio Viera de Mello in his willingness to roll up his sleeves and sit down with whoever it took to get things done. He had no qualms about ‘negotiating with people who do immoral things.’ Thus, Holbrooke not only negotiated with Slobodan Milosevic but became on friendly terms with him. He made no apologies for this ‘provided one doesn’t lose one’s point of view’ and, in perhaps his best-known pronouncement, declared that ‘If you can prevent the deaths of people still alive, you’re not doing a disservice to those already killed trying to do so.’ In a sense, Holbrooke was a nearly man (though nominated, he never won the Nobel Prize and he lost out to Madeleine Albright when she was appointed Secretary of State in 1997 – not to mention his association with the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton) but it was a glittering career all the same and American diplomacy is undoubtedly the poorer for his departure.

This evening we watched another small gem of a film, L’Italien. Chic, elegant, sexy Dino Fabrizzi is the star salesman at a Masserati showroom in Nice. At 42 years of age, he is offered the probability of becoming director and at the same time his girlfriend, Hélène, is thinking about marriage. Dino’s Italian background seems much to the fore, with always a choice Italian phrase at the right moment. But Dino is living a double lie. His real name is Mourad Ben Saoud. When Dino tells Hélène he is flying off to Rome to visit his parents he is actually driving to Marseille airport where his Algerian mother always faithfully awaits his ‘return’ from Italy, where he claims he works. It all begins to fall apart when Mourad’s father, a devout Muslim and suffering from a heart attack, makes Mourad promise to celebrate Ramadan in his place. Cue a series of witty gags and observations as Mourad increasingly realises that he has not just denied his religion but also his culture. The script has further fun by making Mourad’s best friend and adviser a Jewish-origin artist. Digging a little after the film, I was interested to discover this analysis of the film and of the phenomenon which it highlights on the BBC website here. Apparently an increasing number of second- and third-generation Algerian immigrants invent such double lives for themselves to favour their employment prospects. With questions of identity and immigration much to the fore in France at the moment, this film, which puts all of its emphasis on Mourad’s self-consciousness and does not take the easy route of portraying the French as racist, provides much food for thought, delivered with humour. As if to underline the message, the actor, Kad Merad, who plays Dino (and plays him very well) is said to have shortened his name from Kaddour to win himself more acting roles.

This evening I met an English academic, Marc Corner, who teaches in the Department of International Studies at HUB University Brussels and who has recently published a book entitled The Binding of Nations  From European Union to World Union. Corner’s basic thesis is that the European integration model has undeniably worked and that its basic methodology – limited pooling of sovereignty, incremental progress, learning by doing, enlightened self-interest, starting with a limited number of countries – could and maybe should be applied on a world scale, starting with the issue of food security. I was very much interested to hear Corner elaborating on this necessary ‘Copernican revolution’. As I pointed out to him, a lot of federalist thinking during the 1939-45 war considered the possibility of a world federation before turning to a European experiment. To many of those theorists Europe was a laboratory – just a first step. Consider, for example, what William Beveridge (yes, the father of the welfare state) wrote in his 1940 Peace by Federation? (Federal Tracts N° 1, Federal Union, London): ‘Limitation of area is essential; federalism is a strong remedy for a virulent discorder; it is not a healing lotion that can be sprayed over the world. World federation is for the millenium.’

This evening, at N° 2 sprog’s suggestion, we watched Gladiator, an epic if ever there was one. I have written before about the educational effects of this sort of film, loosely based on historical fact. Love them or loathe them, they spark interest and provide understanding in a way that historical novels once used to for previous generations. It’s not just visualising the Colosseum as it once used to be or understanding why the Roman army was so effective, for example, but concepts such as imperial versus republican rule. Joaquin Phoenix, playing a sociopathic usurper (Commodus), puts in a particularly convincing performance, I thought, and a perfect illustration of Lord Acton’s dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely. As Commodus turns paranoid and starts to wipe out the opposition I was reminded of Seneca’s brilliant reminder to all tyrants: you can kill as many enemies as you like, but your successor will be among those who survive.

This afternoon we watched The Men Who Stare at Goats, described as a ‘slapstick comedy war film’ and starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor. The film is loosely based on a documentary book of the same title by Jon Ronson about American military experiments to use so-called psychic powers. Clooney plays a trained ‘psychic spy’ on a vague mission to Iraq where, it transpires, he will re-discover his former mentor, played by Jeff Bridges, and his former rival, played by Kevin Spacey. Clooney is actually very good at comedy and his performance is a highlight of the film, followed in close second place by Jeff Bridges, as a new-ager maverick (with strong echoes of The Big Lebowski). Despite the slapstick (and there are some excellent gags), the film provides enough glimpses of real war (an atrocity in Vietnam, a Bagdad firefight between two western commercial security details, an improvised explosive device) to remind the viewer that, actually, war is no laughing matter. The de-bleated goats of the title would surely agree.

Early this morning the dog insisted on taking me for a walk. It has been a long, hard autumn (and a gratifyingly productive one), so I gladly accepted the invitation. We walked around the half-frozen lakes in Tervuren, with much snow still on the ground, and at one point we came to the biggest flock of coots (the Americans would say a ‘cover’) that I have ever seen. By chance, I had heard an early morning Farming Today broadcast on BBC Radio 4 earlier in the week about precisely this flocking tendency of birds in the winter (think of chaffinches and linnets in the hedgerows), and so I knew what I was looking at. The coots start to gather where food is most easily available; in this case, almost certainly where there were gaps in the ice. These gatherings attract the attention of other coots, who join on the avian logic that the other birds wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t a reason. And so the crowd grows. But I have never seen quite so many coots together in one place. I wouldn’t know how to count them but there were hundreds, at least.

Miracle workers

This evening I attended a ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Northern Ireland Executive’s Brussels Office. It was yet further proof that miracles can and do happen. I grew up in London in the 1970s, a time when IRA bombs and bomb scares were a frequent occurrence. I remember with particular vividness the 31 October 1971 Post Office Tower bomb. My brother was in Great Ormond Street Hospital and I walked from Euston to the hospital the day before and on the day itself and remember gazing up at the damaged tower (which has remained closed to the public ever since). I remember too the claustrophobia of bomb scares and emergency evacuations in the London Underground. The bombs felt very close in those days. At this evening’s event there were three speakers: Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and a Sinn Féin member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission. The latter’s presence was not purely symbolic. As one of our members, Jane Morrice, strongly argued in a December 2007 EESC initiative opinion (The role of the EU in the Northern Ireland peace process), the EU played a key role. In his speech, McGuinness (allegedly a former active IRA member) confirmed this, adding with passion how he had been inspired by the genesis of the EU and, in particular, the way France and Germany had found a way to co-exist peacefully.

One of the important items on this morning’s agenda was an own-initiative opinion (rapporteur: Ivan Voles, Czech, Employer’s Group) on EU-Russia relations. The Russian ambassador to the European Union, Mr Vladimir Chizhov, was invited to address the plenary and attend the debate, which followed hard on the heels of the 7 December EU-Russia summit and was therefore particularly timely. As a courtesy to our guest, we laid on Russian interpretation, and so we had the ‘novelty’ of hearing Russian spoken in the plenary session. Of course, it was not so much of a novelty to those of our members who, in the old Cold War Europe, learnt Russian at school. As to the debate, it is clear that in the EU’s bilateral relations with Russia, as with its relations with so many different parts of the world, dialogue between representatives of civil society organisations will become a specific and structured aspect.

This morning the plenary session heard from the European Commissioner with responsibility for agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, on his vision for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Now, it just so happens that the new President of the EESC, Staffan Nilsson, is a farmer, and farming and farmers, as an important part of organised civil society, are well represented in the Committee’s membership, so the Commissioner had an informed debate on his hands. And, quite clearly, he appreciated this. The Commission’s three-pillared vision for the post-2013 CAP puts the emphasis variously on a safe and sufficient food supply, sustainability and profitability and the maintenance of a living countryside. EESC members speaking in the ensuing debate insisted that there should be a new pact between farmers and society, and that there should be a more targeted relationship between what farmers receive and their function (rather than a readjustment of their historic entitlement, that is). There were echoes in Ciolos’s analysis of what the 9 November EESC Bureau had heard from the Commissioner with responsibility for the Budget, Janusz Lewandowski (link to post here): revolutions are impossible, and thus the direction of change (and hence the setting of future trends) is as important as the substance.