In the evening to the Librairie Quartiers Latins for the vernissage for my better half’s latest exhibition, ‘l’oeil est un voyageur inculte’. This time there are words as well as images (a favourite frontier for the artist in question) and the works have been hung cleverly to interact in an organic fashion with the books and shelves of the bookshop around them. There was a good turnout of friends and acquaintances and, it seemed to me, a fair amount of artistic networking. All-in-all, a pleasant evening.

To the EESC’s Communication Group to listen to a presentation by Francesca Ratti, Director General for Information in the European Parliament, about the information campaign that has been commissioned for this June’s European elections. The Parliament’s administration always finds itself in a strange and potentially awkward situation in election years. Parliamentary and governmental administrations may of course publicise election dates and encourage people to register to vote (where that is necessary) and they may also encourage people to use their vote. But, to quote the old adage, people don’t vote for parliaments and the EP’s specificity provides additional challenges in that regard: no government stands or falls on the results; it is difficult to imagine pan-European Obama’s materialising; and campaigns take place in numerous languages. This year, as Ratti explained, the Parliament has turned to a Berlin-based advertising agency which has come up with an ingenius approach. The Financial Times recently ran an article which describes the campaign in some detail (link here), but basically the campaign’s strongest theme is that there is a genuine choice involved and that votes in the European elections do have consquences. The campaign’s cleverness is in getting that message across without entering into partisan distinctions. A strong European Parliament, legitimised through high turnout, is the best guarantee of the European Union’s democratic future. So, if you have a vote please use it!

Flagey

In the evening to the beuatifully refurbished Flagey complex to listen to the Ictus Ensemble and the Neue Vocalsolisten from Stuttgart performing ‘Matra‘, a mixture of pieces derived from tantrique chants and madrigals and using the human voice as instrument alongside other instruments. Intriguing and beautiful and brilliantly performed.

When, during the Delors years, I was in the European Commission’s Secretariat General  there was a recurring debate within the Commission about its relationship with national parliaments. At one stage, Delors wanted to nominate a Commission member with specific responsibility for relations with national parliaments, but he was soon convinced otherwise. The constant refrain we heard at the time was that the European Commission could only deal with ‘European level’ institutions – in other words, the European Parliament and the Council. To deal with national parliaments would be to interfere in national politics, so the argument went. It’s all water under the bridge now. The role of national parliaments is already enshrined in the Treaties but would be consolidated by the Lisbon Treaty’s implementation. I write all of this because today I was visited by Evelyne Pichenot, a member of the EESC but also of the French Economic, Environmental and Social Council. She is currently drafting an opinion for the French Council about the EU’s consultative process. She wants to stress the importance of proper and structured consultation of civil society organisations. She thinks that maybe national economic and social councils could also be involved in European Union-level consultative processes via the European Economic and Social Committee. I think you’ll see the parallel. All too frequently there is a fallacious distinction between the ‘European’ and the ‘national’. In reality, it’s all one seamless whole.

The EESC’s Budget Group met in parallel with the President’s conference and I had to perform that most difficult of tricks – being in two places at one time. Fortunately, the meetings were in adjacent rooms. I darted back several times during the day but I was happily with the Budget Group when it unanimously approved the draft 2010 budget. Readers of this blog will know that I have been trying to put in place a new procedure for the establishment of the Committee’s draft budgets and also a new relationship between the administration and the EESC’s members. In that context, the Budget Group’s decision today was of great symbolic importance. ‘You’re on the right track,’ was the basic message.

Yesterday (Monday) evening I met with a young German ethnologist, Jan Linhart, who was in the audience when I gave my Centre/UACES lecture about fleshing out the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions on participatory democracy (see previous post) and had asked to see me to discuss his project. He and a few like-minded friends have been developing a sort of electronic agora or, as they describe it, an inter-active, on-line platform; a non-profit, open source, Web 02 project. The project, dubbed ‘ECHO’,  is still embryonic, but it, or something like it, could be revolutionary. I was brought up to believe in parliamentary democracy and the importance of political parties as aggregators. Over the past ten years I have come to recognise the potential of participatory democracy and, in particular, the value of structured dialogue (‘civil dialogue’) with civil society as important complements to representative democracy. The Lisbon Treaty would also, in the form of the citizens’ initiative, introduce an element of direct democracy. But the web and the internet have opened up vast new possibilities for the aggregation and expression of the popular will that our establishments have not even really begun to address properly. I sometimes wonder if we are not shoring up a democratic house on shifting technical sands. As Jan Linhart put it, ‘If it’s not our project then it will be somebody else’s.’ By coincidence, in the next day’s edition of the Guardian newspaper, there was an article about a new Fabian Society pamphlet  regarding online campaigning. In the pamphlet, Nick Anstead and Will Straw explain that ‘In the networked society citizens do not require the institutional scaffolding offered by parties to engage in political activity. Anyone can set up a simple campaigning group on an issue with a few clicks of a mouse.’ Under Jan Linhart’s model, citizens would not need to be partisan at all, but simply have and express views. Food for thought.

Today the Committee hosted a major conference on the current economic crisis (the full title was ‘Let’s climb out of this crisis together and opt for progress!’). The European Commission’s President was, alongside our own President, Mario Sepi, the opening speaker. Two other Commission members, Vladimir Spidla and Joaquin Almunia, bolstered the proceedings. The debates were impassioned, the contributions rich and we have never had more television cameras or journalists in the house. Among the participants were the Presidents and Secretaries General of national economic and social councils, giving accounts of how the national implementation of the recovery plan looks to them. President Barroso reiterated the importance he attaches to the 7 May Prague employment summit and the contribution he has invited the EESC to make to it. Just one Barroso soundbite, translated from the French (where it works better); ‘we need more action and less gesticulation’. There’s a full account of the proceedings, speeches, press release, etc at the EESC’s website here. This was easily one of the Committee’s most successful conferences. It is just a shame that it was on such a sad topic.

Our President received a letter (dated 13 March)  today from the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. The letter explains that the Commission President would not only want the Committee to be involved in the preparation for the 7 May Employment Summit but would like the EESC to make a contribution to it. ‘I would find it particularly interesting,’ writes Barroso, ‘if the Committee could put at out disposal all of its experience as an intermediary between the European institutions and European civil society.’

Back from Prague, in the evening I went out with my fellows pedants, John and Stephen. We meet occasionally to be excessively and exaggeratedly pedantic about everything and anything.  That’s the excuse, anyway, and normally we weave and wander happily home after a long and refreshing evening. But this time I wandered home more than a little discouraged and with not so much of the weaving. We started off at Fat Boys in the Place du Luxembourg and finished with a curry at Mumtaz in the Chaussée de Wavre.  There’s a drop of the Irish blood in all three of us. At Fat Boys they were on the dark stuff, the Guinness, straightaway, but all I could manage was lager. Moreover, they were sticking them away and I just couldn’t keep up. Worse, I kept wondering when we would move on and eat (perish the thought) and, when we did, I had to leave behind undrunk beer (sacrilege!).  William Hague, a former leader of the Conservative Party, was mercilessly teased by the press when he once reminisced about drinking many pints of beer on a Friday and Saturday night, but I think he was simply telling the truth. The standard model for Friday and Saturday nights was the pub (and many beers) until closing time, followed by a curry (and Indian restaurants had licences, so you could continue on the Kingfishers). And that’s what made me sad. I just couldn’t hack it anymore. I have lost the habit. (Having said that, I noticed that John and Stephen shifted to wine in the restaurant.)

At the (Prague) Group III extraordinary Bureau meeting I was scheduled to say a few words of welcome for the guest of honour and keynote speaker, Michael Kocab. In my speech, which you can read below, I explained how I and my wife had managed to get to Prague in the middle of the Velvet Revolution back in December 1989. The day after we arrived, Alexander Dubcek was appointed speaker of the Federal Parliament and Vaclav Havel became President of the Republic. The minister’s eyes flashed with enthusiasm for, in those heady days, he had been standing alongside Vaclav Havel (and, indeed, Havel remains one of his closest friends). There’s more than a hint of the Tim Smits about Kocab. He started life making films and still now plays in a rock band (you can hear some of his music on his website at the link above). But what all of that generation have is a priceless experience, of having lived through the birth of democracy. Already today, young Czechs have little idea of what the previous regime meant. In that context, the Czech Government has produced a special information film for the young precisely in order to explain to them why what happened was so important and how ‘Europe’ made such a difference to them. It is one of the ironies of the integration process that its advantages rapidly become invisible. (Other Kocab web pages are available here and here.)
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