Today the EESC’s Communication Group met and its guest speaker was Claus Sorensen, Director General of the European Commission’s DG for Communication. He came with a reassuring and positive message. The emphasis in the new Commission will not be on communication so much as on communicating. Indeed, he had come hotfoot from a meeting of the private staff of all the future Commissioners where he had implored them to think about the communication aspects of their work as from day one.

This afternoon I attended a meeting of the Committee’s enlarged Presidency (an informal meeting of the President, Vice-Presidents and Group Presidents). There were several ‘money matters’ on the agenda: the consequences of the Lisbon Treaty in 2010 and the draft 2011 budget among them. All of the institutions are facing a sort of double whammy at the moment. Because of the economic and social crisis, voters and governments will quite rightly want to be tough on the institutions. At the same time, though, the Lisbon Treaty expects the institutions to do a lot more. Of course, there are always economy gains to be found and further ‘negative priorities’ can always be identified. But at a certain stage doing more with less will lead inexorably either to doing less or to doing less well.