Scanning the obituaries the other day (you know; we check the dates of birth to see whether our generation is starting to die off), I saw that Chris Finnegan had died. Who he? you ask. He was a British boxer who won the middleweight gold medal at the 1968 Mexico Olympics and, strange as it may seem, I occasionally drank a pint with him and his brother, Kevin, in the pubs on Uxbridge High Street. Like many a place at the end of the London underground, Uxbridge was once a sleepy village. I used to get the Met out there as a youngster and then, in my late teens, we would sometimes head out that way for parties. As a student, I’d get the bus up to Oxford from there and it still had that sleepy feel to it. One way or another, I spent quite a bit of time in the pubs on the High Street, and that’s where I met the Finnegan brothers. At first, it was just a nodding acquaintance, but over time we got talking and, mainly, joking. They had a reputation as being hard men and you surely wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of them. My long hair did not go down a bundle with Chris but he liked nothing better than a drink and a joke. I like to think that, at the time, I was pretty good at both of those. The funny thing is, though, that I had completely forgotten about that passing acquaintance and, I am sure, if I hadn’t happened to see the obituary I would never have thought of Chris and the Finnegan brothers ever again.

It was bike Friday again. This time I went off to our Bertha von Suttner building to fly the flag and sit the obligatory quizz. I won a dinky little saddle bag for myself but I didn’t get all of the answers. For example, can children ride on the pavements? The answer is ‘yes’, but the wheels must be 50 cms or less in diameter. So now you know.

Consolation for all those staff reports came in the evening when we went to the Beaux Arts to see Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. Thus we discovered a beautiful and trasnformational piece of early Schönberg, ‘Verklärte Nacht’, and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s lyrical symphony. Salonen is, quite simply, the goods. Just as the Latvians were out in force to see Mariss Jansons (see 30 January post), so the Finns were out for Salonen. Several of the EESC’s Finnish members were in the audience and during the entre acte they told me that it is actually easier to see their most famous conductor (and contemporary composer) in Brussels than in Helsinki

One of the more interesting aspects of being a Secretary General is that your diary is no longer your own. You can put appointments into it, but only just like anybody else who needs you. Your private office filter the demands and consult with you when they feel they should, but otherwise their job is to fill your day as efficiently as possible, filling in the gaps between meetings, for example. At the moment they, and I, have a challenge on our collective hands. It’s the staff report season. For various reasons (the departure of my predecessor, the absence of directors for human resources and for finance, etc) I am personally responsible for forty-seven – I repeat; forty-seven – staff reports. Some of these can be carried over, but most require a meeting with the person being assessed (theoretically up to one hour in length). Today, in between various other meetings, I had meetings with six of the colleagues I am responsible for assessing. I am deeply committed to the assessment exercise and determined to give everybody the time and attention they deserve but just at the moment life is a bit of a challenge…

In the afternoon I went to the European Centre for Public Affairs to deliver a talk on ‘Change in the European Institutions 2009-2014′. This followed an invitation from an old friend, Tom Spencer, who was a distinguished MEP for twenty years (1979-1999) and continues to contribute to the integration process, particularly through his work on public affairs and transparency. It’s the sort of activity advisors quite rightly advise their bosses from doing – out of area and time-consuming – and that’s precisely why I did it. Readers will detect a hint of the Tim Smits in this, but I genuinely believe that those of us engaged in ‘building Europe’ should get out and talk about it from time to time. In addition, the talk gave my institution visibility and, oh, all right, I admit it; it was an interesting topic to be talking about.

At lunchtime to the European Commission’s Berlaymont building for the launch party for the new website of the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO). A great deal of excellent work is being done by EPSO and its still relatively new Director, David Bearfield, as speaker after speaker, including yours truly, happily attested. A few posts ago I wrote about interinstitutional synergies as the way of the future. EPSO is another good example.

In the morning I went before the EESC’s Ad Hoc Group for Information Technology, known by its wonderful acronym, AGIT. It sounds very Orwellian but I regard it as an important body because IT is one of the major interfaces between our members and us, the administration. I was therefore determined to go and show my supprt for the new Chairwoman, Renate Heinisch who, by chance, I have known for a long time since she was for some time a Member of the European Parliament, back in my Commission SG days.

In the afternoon to the European Parliament for a courtesy visit and discussion with the EP’s 2010 budget rapporteur, Vladimir Manka. This will necessarily be an austerity budget adopted in a recession year and it is important that the institutions get their preliminary draft budgets right. Mr Manka’s emphasis is on interinstitutional synergies as a way of avoiding duplicating tasks and functions and hence of realising economies. Here, the EESC and its counterpart, the Committee of the Regions, are on strong ground. Notably, they share their translation and logistics functions and use the other institutions’ buildings, for example, for their plenary sessions. I am convinced this is the way of the future for all of the institutions.

My counterpart at the Committee of the Regions, Gerhard Stahl, and I had invited Harald Romer, the outgoing Secretary General of the European Parliament to lunch to say thank you and wish him well. There was much choice gossip, none of which I can repeat, of course, and considerable learned discussion about interinstitutional developments. On a personal note, Harald explained that he will be making a clean break from Brussels, after a distinguished 27-year European career, heading back to Copenhagen. I much admire this and wonder whether, frankly, I’d be able to do it.

Like many students abroad, I would imagine, I did some translation work to help make ends meet when I was in Italy as a post-graduate student many moons ago. Almost half of the EESC’s staff are in the translation directorate or related functions and I suddenly realised that I had very little idea about what they were really doing – apart, that is, from what I knew from those far-off amateur experiences. So I asked the Director, Gonzalo, and the Deputy Director, Ineta, to organize a half-day visit for me and the scales fell from my eyes. Translation, when you have 22 languages, two Committees and two administrations, and a requirement for the greatest terminological exactitude, has to be done with all the precision, speed and efficiency of a watch factory. Imagine a series of rivulets flowing into streams that then become mighty rivers; that is a way of thinking of the translation requests that come from the EESC and its sister Committee. The rivers join at a confluence called, prosaically, ‘planning’, where a team of gifted and enthusiastic colleagues manage the workflow in such a way that everybody gets what they want when they need it, but they do more than that. Another set of colleagues explained to me about the Translators’ Work Bench and the contribution made by the ‘superusers’ (translators and assistants with excellent IT skills who act as localised helpdesks). And other colleagues explained about the Formatting Group. Then it was on to the Coordination Unit, where I spent far too much time because there were so many interesting things to discuss, and from there to a young and very able assistant in the Slovenian Unit, Robert, who showed me how the assistants deal with the workflow, and from there to an official in the Italian Unit, Giancarlo, who has himself developed (in his free time) an extraordinary piece of software to extract original documentation and references in all languages. By now, it felt more like a visit to a scientific laboratory! We’d run out of time and my return visit is already scheduled. In the meantime, thank you to everybody for a fascinating learning experience!