I chaired two big (in terms of numbers of participants) meetings today. The first, this morning, was the task force set up to manage the ‘renewal’ process within the Committee. The mandate of our current members expired on 20 September. Our new members, both those returning and those newly nominated, take up the cudgels on 20 October. One hundred and two of the three hundred and forty-four members will be new to the Committee. That’s almost a third, though there are some big variations (all previous Estonian members were confirmed, whereas just one-third of previous Slovakian members will be returning). As I never tire of pointing out in this context, we will never get a second chance to make a first impression. Fortunately, I could not want for a better group of colleagues and all is going smoothly. This afternoon I co-chaired, together with my counterpart in the Committee of the Regions, Gerhard Stahl, a meeting of our directors of the joint services and our directors of our respective administrations. This regular meeting is a part of the overall mechanics and governance of the two Committees’ administrative cooperation agreement, under which we pool and share a significant proportion of our human and budgetary resources in order to achieve economies of scale. Again, nobody could want for a more cooperative group of colleagues and good progress was made on a number of administrative dossiers.