This morning I gave a talk to a group of managers, journalists, diplomats, civil servants and NGO representatives coming from France, Belgium, the UK, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Venezuela. The visit had been organised by the European Centre for Public Affairs as part of an overall course on ‘public affairs in the New Europe’. I confess, as I set off for the engagement I did wonder what had possessed me to do such a thing on quite such a busy day in quite such a busy period. Very soon, though, I remembered. We denizens of ‘Brussels’ run the constant risk of losing touch with the ‘real world’ on whose behalf we are working. I have always believed that the best way for people like me to keep in touch with the ‘real world’ is … to keep in touch with it! Such speaking engagements are an easy way to enter into dialogue with people and practitioners and the questions I had to field at the end of my talk did not disappoint in that context. Indeed, I think all denizens of ‘Brussels’ should be obliged to speak to the real world on a fairly regular basis.

No matter how busy my life has become, I have always attached great importance to such activities as parent-teachers’ meetings. I may turn up late, but generally I manage to get there. This evening, however, it was simply impossible. I was still sitting beside my President in the Bureau long after the PT meetings had begun. It wasn’t serious in the sense that my better half was there but, still, it was a price to pay and took the gloss just a little off of my feeling of satisfaction about the way the Bureau meeting went.

We had the Bureau meeting all afternoon and because of a heavy agenda, late into the evening. Despite the length and some passionate discussions, the meeting went well. From my point of view as SG it went particularly well because the Bureau appointed by a large majority a new Director for the new Directorate of Consultative Works in the new establishment plan for the Committee. Little-by-little, we are moving to a full implementation of that new establishment plan (I had always promised to implement it gradually). The new Director, Alan Hick, is somebody who knows the Committee and its consultative function like the back of his hand and he can clearly play an important role in reinforcing that consultative function in the context of the new Parliament, the new Commission and – who knows? – maybe a new Treaty…

Today, my Committee of the Regions counterpart, Gerhard Stahl, and myself were able proudly to put out a general announcement to all of our staff and members. Our two institutions, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, have just been awarded the ‘Ecodynamic Enterprise’ Label, together with the maximum three stars accompanying the label, putting us in the top category in terms of environmental performance (only 14 of the 124 organisations awarded the label have achieved three stars). The labelling scheme was launched by the Brussels Region Environment Agency in 1999 to encourage good environmental practices in the private and public sectors. The judges were impressed by our waste sorting and recycling policies, our mobility and public transport policy, our energy efficient buildings and our energy savings, our use of unbleached, recycled paper, the organic products available in our cafeteria, the energy savings we have achieved so far, and so on. Of course, we can – and will – do better, but this was a proud moment.

Lamassoure

Yesterday evening and this morning I attended the Budgets Committee of the European Parliament. The Committee was voting on the first reading amendments to the 2010 budget. I went just in case there were questions (one never knows) and out of respect for this arm of the budgetary authority. But I must say it is also a pleasure to return to my old stamping ground and an institution for which I’ll always have a soft spot as well as much academic interest. In the end, a series of helpful amendments, tabled by the rapporteur, Mr Manka, went through with a very large majority. Equally, a series of unhelpful amendments, not tabled by the rapporteur (let’s just leave it at that) were rejected by the same very large majority. All-in-all, it was a good result for the Committee. But it was an enjoyable experience for more than that reason. Alain Lamassoure, the chairman of the CoBu (the Committee’s French acronym) is a really fun chairman to watch at work. He is witty, professional, good-natured and efficient, all at the same time. A good chairman changes the whole atmosphere of such Committees which, because of the nature of their work, can seem very technocratic. His website is here, by-the-way.

It became evident as the pre-session meeting went through the draft Bureau and plenary session agenda that we have a heavy but also rich few days ahead of us. At the end of these pre-session meetings I like to invite colleagues to inform everybody about recent important Committee activities. The first to speak was, of course, the Head of the President’s Cabinet, Andrea Pierucci, to inform everybody about Mario Sepi’s trip to China and the Autonomous Region of Tibet (see various posts) and its follow up. We heard about Joensuu and about the Committee’s activities focused around the Pallethouse (see previous posts). Of course, I knew about those, since I had been to both. But we also heard about: a joint panel discussion on employment and the social impact of the crisis in Latvia, co-organised by the Committee’s Section for Employment, Social Affairs and Citizenship in Riga (17 September); a public hearing on the working of the internal market that the Committee’s Single Market Observatory had organised in Sofia (18 September); a trade and development workshop that the EESC’s External Relations Section  had organised in New Delhi (24 September); and the first meeting of the EESC’s joint consultative committee with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (25 September). When I hear about all of those activities I can’t stop my chest from swelling just a little. It is not just the themes and issues that are being covered, and not just the quality of the work that is undertaken on such occasions, but it is also the sheer professional excellence of the organisation. Few commercial organisations could organise so many different events in so many different locations with so many participants and so few staff and with such excellent results. Well done, everybody!

Where I began

Well, all right, I am exaggerating just slightly. Still, this was a heavy but very productive Monday. Pre-session Mondays are always hectic. The usual Directors’ meeting starts earlier and is followed by what we call a ‘pre-session’ meeting, bringing together all of the services involved in the preparation for the plenary session. As Secretary General, I chair both meetings. In the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where I begun my career, there was one such meeting very early every morning (it was called the ‘morning mass’), and somehow the pre-session always brings back memories of those ‘morning masses’, with the then Secretary General, Sir John Priestman, as the High Priest, murmuring intonations.

We were invited by very near and dear friends to the wedding of their son in a leafy Liège suburb. The weather today has been simply gorgeous; blue sky, warm sun, but fresh air – real Indian summer stuff. Arriving in Liège on the motorway, you get a grandstand view of Santiago Calatrava’s new Liège Guillemins station, a vast swoop of white steel and reinforced glass. I am sure the interior is beautifully spectacular, but from the outside it looks almost too big for its surroundings (note to self: catch train to Liège soon and check out inside). The wedding was very, very nice and hugely touching. The young couple’s friends sang (and sang very well) throughout the ceremony, accompanied by other friends on guitars. So we had Emilie (thank you, Emilie) singing Jacques Brel’s ‘Quand on a que l’amour’ with Christophe on guitar. It’s not the easiest of songs to sing, but Emilie pulled it off brilliantly. We also had Extreme’s ‘More than words’, with excellent harmonies, sung by Pascale and Romain (the latter on guitar) and Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time after Time’, sung by Emilie and Pascale, accompanied by Romain. The readings were well chosen, the parish priest was young and relaxed, and the congregation radiated happiness. Additional poignancy came from the fact that our friends had got married in the very same church just over thirty years ago. Coming back to the Brel, everybody was saying afterwards how it had given them goosebumps or brought tears to their eyes. If it were simply a poem, it would be brilliant (‘Quand on a que l’amour/Pour tracer un chemin/Et forcer le destin/A chaque Carrefour.’). You can hear the original version on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca8D52bF9OU&feature=related). The reception afterwards was in an old converted brick and stone farmhouse set in the rolling countryside around Liège that, with its tree-studded fields, reminded me a little of the English countryside. We got talking to a Belgian couple from Malmédy. Though we were speaking in French, she was a Germanophone. Her husband, from the same village, was a Francophone. Their children spoke German, but studied in French. The sun shone, the champagne sparkled, the happy buzz from the ceremony had been carried over to the reception. It’s on such occasions that I am reminded how pleasant and how interesting it is to live in Belgium.

Earlier this evening I met up with our composer friend, Nigel Clarke. Just before the summer break he asked me if I would like to write a poem to accompany a piece of music he had been commissioned to compose. Having never been ‘commissioned’ to write anything creative, I was deeply flattered and thrilled and set to with great gusto over the summer break. Nigel’s idea was to intersperse his six movements with six stanzas. He has a programme on his computer which enables him to play his compositions. This evening, for the first time, I heard the music that my poetry will accompany. Well, he is a true professional and his composition was great; full of wit and humour. Moreover, the poem and the music married well. The first public performance of both will be on 10^th October and Nigel has now asked me whether I would be prepared to read out my poem personally. I am thrilled to bits but also slightly apprehensive. After all, it’s not quite the same territory as giving a talk about the European Union…

After the Metla House in Joensuu (Wednesday) and the ancestral temple from Quzhou at La Monnaie (yesterday) I completed the week with a visit to the Pallethouse at the Quai aux Briques. The Pallethouse was designed by two young Austrian architects, Andreas Claus Schnetzer and Gregor Pils, as an ecological and yet also aesthetical response to the challenge of cheap housing. Their basic idea is to recycle the ubiquitous wooden pallet, which otherwise is so often burnt, particularly in poorer parts of the world.  Once properly insulated, using cheap local materials such as straw, the pallets are transformed into malleable building blocks. The European Economic and Social Committee brought the Pallethouse to Brussels as part of its contribution to Save It! week. Today, in a tent beside the Pallethouse, the Committee organised a public debate, centred around the Overshoot campaign (I’ll do separate posts in due course about Save It! and Overshoot!). Afterwards, the President of the EESC’s TEN Section, Janos Toth, introduced me to the architects. You can read more about the Pallethouse at www.pallethouse.at. In three days I have seen three very different wooden constructions in three very different contexts, but the underlying conclusion is clear; we should remember wood and use it more.