No sooner had I regained my office than I received another pleasant Christmas surprise. The Committee’s Director of Human Resources, Gianluca Brunetti, appeared together with two colleagues, Florence Baeten and Annette Orth, to give me the present you can see in the picture. It is a framed poster about ‘the competency framework’ that arose out of a seminar the directorate held and is, in a sense, the directorate’s mission statement. It has been signed by all of the officials in the directorate and will now take pride of place on our office wall.