André Mordant

On the Wednesday evening of the Employees’ Group’s extraordinary meeting in Borzée (see 14 April post) EESC member André Mordant, who was my neighbour at the dinner table, sang a song about les canuts, and he encouraged us all to sing the chorus: ‘C’est nous les canuts/Nous allons tout nus!’ You can listen to the song here. Intrigued, I started to look into the story of the canuts (there’s an English account here). They were the silk workers of Lyons and their first revolt, in 1831, was among the earliest of worker uprisings. There were several revolts, and each was put down bloodily (their battle cry was “Vivre libre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant!”). I suppose in British terms they were the equivalent of a conflation of the Luddites and the Peterloo massacre.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking Josef Zboril

A heavily-charged plenary session ran on into this afternoon. It’s always invidious to single out one opinion when there were so many, but one by Josef Zboril (Employers, Czech) caught my eye. It was about going beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measurement of progress and was in response to a communication from the European Commission. I think we are all now pretty familiar with the argument that GDP has become insufficient as a measurement of progress, since it does not take into account such less quantifiable or more subjective goods as, for example, well being. But what I hadn’t realised was just how long it took for GDP to become an internationally recognised and accepted standard for statistical comparison. It is so ubiquitous (think of any economics textbook) that it is impossible to imagine it somehow being replaced. Nor was I aware how many alternative forms of measurement have already been proposed.

The rapporteur

Later in the afternoon the Committee debated and adopted a major opinion on the role of education in combating poverty and social exclusion. The rapporteur, Maria Candelas Sanchez Miguel (Employees, Spain), looked at the various ways in which education and training could help people to be free, independent and capable of contributing to the development of their society: ‘The reasons for choosing inclusive education are both educational and social,’ she said, ‘so as to help change mentalities and build societies free from exclusion, prejudice and discrimination. Inclusive education is also necessary for economic reasons, because it helps to increase competitiveness in the face of new economic challenges and new labour demands,’ she continued. The opinion provides an intellectual platform for the EESC’s forthcoming biennial conference on the theme of ‘Education to combat social exclusion’ (20-22 May, Florence).

Our second Commissioner was Dacian Ciolos, who came to speak about CAP reform. His proposals will be tabled in November and at the moment he is listening carefully to all stakeholders, including the Committee’s members. All speakers in the debate were agreed on the need for greater transparency and continued support for smaller-scale farms. A strong speaker in the debate was EESC member Lutz Ribbe (Various Interests Group, Germany) who authored the Committee’s opinion on CAP reform (adopted at the previous plenary session). As Lutz himself pointed out, the fact that a German ecologist should be the author of such an opinion was in itself a good advertisement for the Committee’s working methods.

The EESC’s plenary session hosted two Commissioners today. The first, Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, came to present the European Commission’s 2010 annual work programme. This was already his second plenary visit and symbolised, I feel, his determination to work closely with the Committee. The EESC’s President, Mario Sepi, advised him not to let the Commission be sidelined by recent intergovernmental initiatives and to reassert its role. In a message reiterated by speakers from the Committee’s three groups, he insisted on ‘a mission statement for Europe which makes citizens feel that they are at the heart of Europe’, promising that civil society would be fully behind the Commission in such an endeavour.

A must-see

This evening we went to see the world première of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Babel, co-written with Damien Jalet and with a set designed by Anthony Gormley. It was danced at the Cirque Royale, though it was a Monnaie production. I have been a fan of Cherkaoui’s ever since I saw him performing his plaintively beautiful Stabat Mater with Jalet at a Dance for Life production. His trade mark is the use of hand movements to create alternative languages, and he uses it to brilliant effect in Babel. Gormley’s simple empty cubes and rectangles (they are mere outlines of polished aluminium) are metamorphosed (I know, I should not do that) by the dancers into a series of sets, culminating in a wonderful riff where gradually the shape of the tower of Babel appears before the audience. Cherkaoui intersperses comic interludes with manic dances and geometric arrangements (the dancers were uniformly excellent in what looks to be a very demanding production, and they were also excellent actors), accompanied by Asiatic percussion and chanting. This is a must-see.

The Bureau

This afternoon’s Bureau meeting took several important decisions but, without wishing to be provocatively enigmatic, I shall have to wait a few days before writing about these in more detail. In the meantime, though, I can write that these decisions represent great progress and are major steps towards my vision of the Secretary General’s role.

One of the bad sex prize winners

A typical busy pre-Bureau and pre-plenary session Monday was followed by an evening meeting of the writers’ circle to which I belong; in other words, a complete change of scenery, a perfect antidote and, as it happened, an interesting discussion about the depiction of sex. One of our members, Tonnie Walls, is writing a very entertaining tragi-comic novel and tonight we were critiquing two of his draft chapters. One of his characters resorts in desperation to prostitution at the rougher end of the trade. Tonnie encapsulates her situation in a wonderful phrase; ‘hard-earned easy money’. Sex is notoriously difficult to write about, and so many good writers have got it wrong that The Literary Review has been running a bad sex prize for years now (not-so-illustrious winners include Melvyn Bragg, Sebastian Faulkes, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer), but that’s not Tonnie’s problem. He depicts sex with enviable ease – in this case, bad sex. The question was whether he needed to include a graphic depiction of such bad sex for the reader to understand just how far the character was prepared to go to get her so-called ‘easy money’. The majority opinion in the circle was, I think, that it would be better to leave the awfulness to the reader’s imagination. I’m still not sure, though, because Tonnie’s graphic depiction makes us really feel for the poor woman in a way that we wouldn’t necessarily if he’d written that the door closed and we then had to imagine what went on behind it.

Later this morning I went down to our car park to greet Jürgen Seidel, Minister for Economics, Labour and Tourism of the German Land of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and a party of intrepid cyclists who were about to set off on a cycling trip from Brussels, from the EU institutions, to Wismar. They are doing this as part of ‘European Week 2010′ (to be celebrated by all German Länder from 2 to 10 May) and their aim is to help bridge the gap between the EU and its citizens – a common endeavour. Altogether, they will cycle some 835 kilometres and when they get to Wismar they will visit a children’s university (an initiative of the local university) and speak about the EU and its institutions. The minister and his fellow cyclists are great fans of the EESC’s European Cycling Lexicon. I ceremonially handed over a boxload that they will distribute back in Wismar and on their way there. The weather for such a send-off couldn’t have been better and they left in great spirits. Not for the first time in such circumstances, I wished I could jump on my bike and join them.