As I never tire of pointing out, the European Economic and Social Committee and its sister consultative body, the Committee of the Regions, pool a lot of their resources in a set of joint services (particularly for translation, buildings, IT and logistics). Through this revolutionary arrangement they save the taxpayer a lot of money. But such innovatory close cooperation between two autonomous institutions requires a lot of governance to make it work. Today, I and my counterpart, Gerhard Stahl, jointly chaired one of those joint governance mechanisms, meeting together with our respective directors to discuss such matters as the budget, document management, human resources, buildings, information security and enlargement. It’s all bread-and-butter stuff but we’re jointly determined to make the arrangement work. Apart from anything else, it sets a good example to the other institutions.