This will be a short week (because yesterday was Whit Monday) but a very busy one. This afternoon the Bureau met again and took another HR decision which brings my vision of the new establishment plan one step further to completion. Nikos Alexopoulos, who has had a long and very broad career within the EESC,  was formally confirmed as Deputy Secretary General. This means I now have two deputies in whom I have complete faith and confidence and to whom I can delegate many operational powers and responsibilities that in the past have been, in my opinion, over-centralised. This will leave me more free to concentrate on strategic issues and, above all, to work more closely with the Committee’s members as they seek to flesh out the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions on participatory democracy.

On 21 April I posted a piece about a venerable former President of the European Economic and Social Committee, Fons Margot, and I wrote up his memories of an eventful life. Just recently, I posted him an article about the post-second World War world and the way international organisations were established to deal with the great movements of displaced people, including former prisoners (Fons having himself been involved in such a work). By return of post Fons sent me a photograph, which I am reproducing here, of his father as a Belgian prisoner-of-war in Berlin, 1914-1918. He is on the far left. The two gentlemen in the middle were British POWs, and the gentleman on the right was a Russian POW. No more needs to be said, really. The photo is a story in itself.

Travellers from the south arriving at Zaventum are used to the sudden encounter with Belgium’s typically cooler and wetter weather, but yesterday it was the other way around; the weather in Belgium at the moment is beautiful and certainly much better than it was in Florence. We profited from the blue skies to go to the Chateau at Seneffe, where a series of eleven installations by Belgian film-maker, composer and artist Thierry De Mey has been set up in the Chateau’s beautifully restored grounds. Our favourite was ‘Prélude à la mer’, a film in triptych projected inside a Mongolian-style yurt. What it showed, to the music of Debussy (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune), was a couple (Mark Lorimer and Cynthia Loemij) dancing a duet choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. What was particularly special about it – and this is De Mey’s trade mark – was that it was filmed on the dry and sandy bed of what used to be the Aral Sea. The dance and the dancers were beautiful anyway, but the setting just made it sublime. This piece was worth the trip in itself.

Two naughty colleagues, Eleonora and Simona, snapped the two images published with this post. I’m publishing them because they also, in their own way, give a hint at the atmosphere accompanying the organisation of any big event: long days, security concerns, changes to the agenda – even a student demonstration. So, in one image, I was snatching a catnap on the steps of the Ospedale on Friday lunchtime. The other image shows me moments before Barroso took the floor and speaks for itself. Put it this way; I slept soundly when I got back to Brussels yesterday evening… 

This is my last post from Florence. I cannot leave without writing something about our hosts, the Istituto degli Innocenti and its President, Alessandra Maggi. Not only is the Ospedale an architectural and cultural jewel (designed by Brunelleschi, decorated by della Robbia, paintings by Botticelli and Ghirlandaio), but it is also, as one of the earliest examples of philanthropy and the beginnings of the welfare state, a perfectly appropriate location for a conference devoted to the theme of combating social exclusion. In fact, the Ospedale was one of the first foundlings’ homes in Europe. Abandoned babies were wet-nursed and weaned and then taught to read and write and apprenticed to various skills in preparation for their re-integration into society (indeed, the plenary sessions of our conference were held in what used to be the boys’ dormitory). It cannot have been easy to have hosted a major international conference in what is now a popular museum but the Istituto and its President managed with elegant and unflappable equanimity. Grazie.

The Biennial Conference concluded this morning with a dense and rich agenda divided into three parts. In the first, the three rapporteurs from the thematic workshops presented their conclusions and recommendations. In the second, a panel that included the Spanish Equality Minister, Bibiana Aido Almagro, for the Spanish Presidency, European Vice-President Isabelle Durant and former Commissioner Mario Monti discussed the institutional perspectives of what had been discussed over the previous two days. How can the EU’s institutional response be best articulated? And how can different levels of governance best work together in meeting the twin challenges of education and social cohesion? In the third, closing panel EESC President Mario Sepi handed to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso the Conference’s conclusions and Barroso then delivered a keynote address (that you can read here; there is also a video). Here are a few ‘soundbites’ from Barroso’s speech, to give a flavour: ‘You can’t have a monetary union without an economic union. The markets have understood this. I hope the politicians will understand.’; ‘We have problems of poverty that growth and employment cannot resolve. We have poor children, poor pensioners. So the reduction of poverty must also be an objective.’; ‘Not for the next election but for the next generation.’ You can read much more about the conference on the Committee’s website here.

Twice I got up early and ran along the banks of the Arno and, not for the first time, wished Brussels could have had a river worth the name. Cities with rivers have extra dimensions (for a start they have two banks) and inevitably lead to pleasing architectural configurations, including bridges, of course. I had the privilege of living and studying in Florence but I always learn something I didn’t know each time I return. This time it was a river-related fact that I happened across whilst paging through a book of old photographs in the Istituto degli Innocenti. The renaioli were sand diggers. They plied the Arno in special flat-bottomed boats, sounding the bottom with long poles to find sand banks. The sand would then be dug up and graded and was particularly used for restoration work. You can read about them here. Some boats still exist but the trade is now gone and thus so has the aspect of the river they once used to ply on a daily basis.

It had been a long two days. In the late evening participants were invited to a pretty theatre, Teatro della Pergola (kindly loaned to us for free by the city of Florence), for a memorable concert by a group of musicians gathered from all over the world, l’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio. They merged together themes and music from Latin America and Asia and Africa and Europe. There was something infectious about their music and about their clear delight in sharing it with us. Very soon people were, literally, dancing in the aisles, culminating in a gigantic conga that snaked its way around the theatre. I shall draw a discreet veil over the rest of the evening. Let me just say that I was not in my seat…!

Maureen O'Neill

It is the late evening. The three thematic workshops have finished their discussions and now the three rapporteurs must try to draw conclusions that can be fed into the conference’s recommendations. President Mario Sepi has convoked a meeting in a wonderfully picturesque meeting room. It is tucked away upstairs behind the cloisters in the Istituto degli Innocenti and is where the governing council of the institute has always met. On its walls are gold-framed portraits of the institute’s benefactors over hundreds of years. Mario Sepi gives the floor to each of the rapporteurs in turn: Maureen O’Neill (UK/Various Interests Group); André Mordant (Belgian/Employees’ Group); and Stéphane Buffetaut (French/ Employers’ Group). There is a great deal of convergence and complementarity. But now the rapporteurs must, together with the administration, turn their impressions into written language. These recommendations, once drafted, will be sent to Brussels, where a team of translators is on stand by. And tomorrow morning the conference participants will find the the three sets of recommendations available to them in the Conference’s three working languages. As Secretary General, I am frankly proud of the Committee’s well-oiled machinery. (The three photographs were taken with my mobile phone and are therefore of poor quality but I hope they give a hint of the atmosphere in the meeting.)

André Mordant

Stéphane Buffetaut

An SG has to be on standby for all occasions and roles. The media is much in evidence here at the Biennial Conference and one of my tasks has been to help, where possible, with the interaction between the press and the conference participants. So it was that yesterday midday I found myself chairing a press conference with President Sepi, EP Vice-President Gianni Pitella and the Vice-President of the Region of Tuscany, Stella Targetti – in Italian! This afternoon I was interviewed by a handsome young journalist (he asked me to say that), Stuart Langridge who is composing a Video Blog for EurActiv of the Conference. (link here) Tomorrow, there’ll be another press conference to moderate – proof positive of the media interest that the Biennial Conference and its theme has been generating. Now you can see my interview here.

The opening press conference