An EU mandarin gets back to the paperwork

It’s the end of a big weekfor me: a successful Bureau and Plenary Session; the new establishment plan unanimously approved; Barroso and French European Affairs Minister, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, participating in important plenary debates. There have been some very long days in there and a number of meetings are still bubbling away this afternoon, but I sense that quite soon I’ll be able to get back to my desk and to all the paperwork and e-mails that have been patiently waiting for me…

This morning the Committee played host to the European Commission’s President, José Manuel Barroso, who had come to debate the Commission’s 26 November European Economic Recovery Plan and also the Lisbon Strategy and the link between the two. The EESC’s President, Mario Sepi, wrote to Barroso on 14 November to express the Committee’s concerns with regard to the more vulnerable in our societies, the need for continued articulation with the overall Lisbon Strategy for an intelligent and green economy, and the need for Europe to take a central and guiding role as the crisis unfolds. Barroso, who spoke with passion and conviction, was happy to concur. This was, he pointed out, the first crisis for the ‘globalised’ world and he was proud of the central role Europe had been playing. It was a rich speech  and, in a strange way, both a reassuring and a depressing one. Depressing, because there are increasing signs that we are entering a prolonged difficult period in which jobs will be lost, homes repossessed and people suffer. Reassuring, because there is a plan – a good one – and, at least as far as the Commission is concerned, the resolve and determination to make it work. Reassuring also because the crisis has provided proof positive of the advantages of the euro and the euro zone. 

As Barroso put it, just imagine if European economies had started a round of competitive devaluations. We are all in this together and the general hope expressed by speakers in the debate is that member states will not forget this.

The carolers in the JDE building

As we left for Malta a big Christmas tree was going up in the entrance hall of the Jacques Delors building and today we had Christmas carols in the same hall sung by the institutions’ choir. Having worked in quite a few institutions over the years I have a few friends in the choir (which is of a very high quality, incidentally) and it’s always nice to see them again in such circumstances. It also means that Christmas is almost upon us. It’s a cliché, but this year has gone so fast.

Today was a big day for the European Economic and Social Committee and also for its new President and its new Secretary General. This afternoon the 39-member Bureau (the main managerial decision-making organ of the Committee) met. It had a number of politically important points on its agenda, not least of them the European Commission’s recovery plan (its President, José Manuel Barroso, will be speaking to the plenary on this subject this Thursday morning) and the proposal of our President, Mario Sepi, for the Committee to generate a ‘manifesto’ of ideas and proposals in the Spring of next year to feed into the European Parliament’s reflection processes, in the lead-up to the autumn 2009 investiture of the new Commission and the generation of its work and legislative programmes. The Bureau held rich debates on both topics, and the President received unanimous backing for his plans, which was really great for him. He has prepared very carefully for his Presidency and has ‘hit the ground running’. The ‘manifesto’ is a flagship idea that will surely be a great success in terms of voicing the concerns and priorities of civil society organisations for the next five years.

The Bureau also discussed ‘stickier’ topics, such as budgetary issues and the launching of the process of adapting the Committee’s rules of procedure. Traditionally, however, there is no topic stickier than changes to the Committee’s establishment plan, and my proposal for a wholesale change to that plan was also on the agenda. We got to it late, at seven-thirty in the evening, but after a robust and frank debate the Bureau unanimously gave me its confidence. It was the rewarding culmination of an intensive period of reflection that began when I was first nominated as SG on 8 July this year and which involved a very broad consultation and information process, both within and outside the house. The Bureau’s unanimous confidence means a huge amount to me, and I am absolutely determined to repay it by delivering the results I promised on 8 July and have repeatedly promised ever since; a dynamic, highly qualified and positively-motivated administration working in the spirit of a service culture and providing the strongest possible support for our members and the unique role they play in the European Union’s policy-making processes.

Jacques Genton: first EESC SG

Sad news came in whilst we were in Malta. The European Economic and Social Committee’s first ever Secretary General, Jacques Genton, passed away on Thursday, 27 November at the age of 90. He had a rich and varied public career in national and local French politics, notably serving as a Deputy and then as a Senator (he was President of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee) and as Mayor of Sancerre. He also played a key role in the establishment of the European Economic Community and served as an expert in  the newly-formed Council of Ministers before being nominated in 1958 as the EESC’s first Secretary General. He served for no less than 13 years. Like Emile Noël (first Secretary General of the European Commission, served for 28 years) and Christian Calmes (first Secretary General of the Council of Ministers, served for 21 years), he was one of a select band of pioneering senior civil servants who created the European public administration and infused it with the strong sense of purpose that it has retained until this day. One of our members, Hubert Ghigonis, knew Genton personally and recalled that he had also been active at the Messina conference, and later worked closely with Maurice Faure (then a French Minister for Foreign Affairs) and Jean-François Poncet. Our Bureau observed a minute’s silence in his memory and we’re now organising a memorial service for early in the New Year. Dean Acheson famously wrote ‘At the Creation’, about his years at the US State Department during a momentous period of post-war history. It’s a shame that such European figures did not also get to record their impressions of the momentous early years of the EU’s life.

President Sarkozy and President Dermagne

In my 13 November post I cheekily put a picture of a 2cv together with the explanation that this was not President Jacques Dermagne’s car. Dermagne, I should recall, the President of the French Economic, Environmental and Social Council, had loaned me his chauffeur and car to get me to the Gare du Nord on time after a Paris meeting ran late. In Valetta, Dermagne came up to me with a mock-serious expression on his face. ‘Dear Martin,’ he said, producing a print-out of my post, ‘I just want you to know that, in fact, I do have a 2cv!’ To great mirth he explained to me that he is the proud owner of a 40 year-old 2cv, recently re-sprayed and still going strong! We had a laugh, as they say.

Joe Montebello

The chair of my evening meeting was the Secretary General of the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development, Joe Montebello. You can see him in this picture. He and his President, Sonny Portelli, really pulled out all the stops for our visit. Joe and I found a few moments yesterday afternoon for a chat, and during this I discovered that Joe’s hobby is cycling. Not only that, but he has written an excellent pocket book setting out 12 routes on the islands of Malta and Gozo. The pocket book gives directions and maps and is illustrated with bplaces of interest. I have vowed to come back with the family and do at least some of these circuits. If you’d like to get a copy of the book, you can contact Joe on monte629@maltanet.net.

Mdina

Yesterday evening, thanks to the generosity of our Maltese hosts, I was given the opportunity of presenting myself, as new EESC SG, to all the SGs of the national Economic and Social Councils. All went well. This was followed by a delicious meal, offered by our hosts, in the ancient and picturesque city of Mdina. My neighbours at the dinner table were the SGs of the Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish and Irish Councils and we had a simply fascinating discussion about the very different roles, functions and prerogatives of our respective Councils/Committees. I am at the moment writing a book about the European Economic and Social Committee. I had always intended there to be a chapter about the consultative/advisory function at Member State level, but as I listened to my fascinating neighbours I kept revising upwards the word count for the chapter!

I am in Valetta today (I flew in at midnight yesterday) for a meeting of the Presidents and Secretaries-General of all the national Economic and Social Councils in the European Union. We meet up twice a year, with the Councils taking it in turn to preside and host the meetings. I am the new kid on the block and I have a big speech to make this afternoon. But it is not a daunting occasion by any means, for we are all involved, in one way or another, in the consultative function, advising political or governmental authorities from the point of view of organised civil society, and so we’re kindred spirits. On our agenda are some important themes: the current economic crisis and its consequences will be high up on the agenda, but we’ll also be discussing the impact of legal and illegal immigration on the labour marets and the implementation of the services directive. Plenty of meat, in other words. I like Malta and I like the Maltese. I find their language, with its mixture of Arabic, English and Italian fascinating and redolently symbolic of the way this island has historically stood between two continents. This morning I sneaked in a quick visit to the Co-Cathedral of St John’s to gaze on the two Caravaggio masterpieces there; the beheading of St John the Baptist and St Jerome. Both are truly extraordinary, but the beheading scene, with the apparent indifference of the onlookers and the sense of haste, as if the executioner had been asked to wring a favourite chicken’s neck and get it over and done with quickly, is so very cleverly done. You really do get the impression that all that will be left in a few minutes’ time is a drying blood stain in the dirt and a couple of ne’er do wells gazing aimlessly out of a window at the street.

Paul Auster

On the flight out to Malta I finished Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark. In the Guardian in February this year, Gilbert Adair wrote about the ‘Fallacy of Retentive Admiration’, which he described as being ‘a reluctance to “drop” some artist in whom one has formerly invested a measure of faith and esteem.’ As a young man, I certainly fell prey to this fallacy with regard to The Beatles; because it, whatever it was, was by The Beatles it had to be good, even though part of me knew, deep down, that sometimes it wasn’t. I was even capable of arguing that Blue Jay Way was a literary and musical masterpiece (I defy anyone now to post a comment stating that it is). I therefore finished Man in the Dark with immense sentiments of irritation, frustration and just a little admiration. The basic conceit, of a character who lives in parallel versions of America, themselves inventions of an author’s mind, is a characteristically clever one, rich in potential. In one of those parallel worlds civil war has broken out in the US (again), and the book’s basic theme is summed up in one short paragraph, on page 111, when a character states ‘America’s at war, all right. We’re just not fighting it here. Not yet, anyway.’ I read on loyally, but never stopped feeling that the basic conceit, of a post 9/11 dual dystopian vision, could – should – have amounted to a (very) good short story. Instead, the book seems, to this reader, to have been padded out with a mish-mash of sentimental musings and notebook fragments, expertly melded together though they may have been. Believe me, it doesn’t come easy to do this to one of my heroes, but though surely inadvertent, the use of a deep well as a port between alternative realities strongly echoes Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle); no less than seven pages (15-22) are devoted to plot summaries of three films (The Bicycle Thief, Grand Illusion and The World of Apu); the chief protagonist, Owen Brick, ‘leaves the world in silence, with no chance to say a last word or think a last thought’ on page 118, with 62 pages still to go (Mein Gott); 180 pages is in any case slim, even for a novella; and there are so many infelicities of one sort or another that this manuscript would surely have been shredded by even the gentlest members of my writers’ circle. I suppose we’re all entitled to an occasional Blue Jay Way. But, Paul, please, let’s not make this a habit, OK?