Two days ago the Financial Times carried a deeply touching article about the terrible dilemma that had faced many of the fishermen on the coast where the 11 March tsunami struck. When the alarm came, these men had a choice. They could head immediately to higher ground (assuming such ground was near enough), knowing that they would be leaving their livelihoods – their boats and equipment – behind. Or they could try to sail out to sea before the waves struck, in the hope of riding the waves and getting beyond them. What do you do? As one villager put it, ‘Do you think about your life, or do you think about your livelihood?’ Many of those who thought about their livelihoods lost their lives. But, just as cruelly, many of those who thought about their lives have lost their livelihoods.

When, as a young official, I worked in the European Commission’s team managing relations with the European Parliament, my (Strasbourg) plenary session week always began with an early Monday morning train ride down to Strasbourg. It was early enough to see deer in the fields and foxes returning after a night’s hunting and the line ran through two regions of great beauty, the Ardennes and the Vosges. The train also rattled – as it still does – through various towns and cities. One of these was the town of Profondeville (literal translation; ‘Deeptown’). I am being unfair to Profondeville and its inhabitants, I know, but nothing ever seemed to be happening there. I wrote a poem about it, a sort of Betjeman pastiche, which has just been published in an anthology. The copyright remains with me, though, so here it is:

Profondeville

Profondeville, Profondeville!

How deep run your waters?

And how still?

Gazing down from the Strasbourg train,

I glimpse your emotions through the rain.

As we furrow past, splashing light on your trees,

I sense low drama and ordinary deeds.

Those garage doors, so tightly shut!

That toy abandoned on a lawn;

A dent in a bumper, grass savagely cut,

And netted windows mysteriously drawn.

Wide, empty roads, a rural lane;

An ominous crow, and a sleep-drugged dog;

Domestic froth flooding from a drain,

And ivy strangling a fire-scarred log.

There’s carnage behind the deserted station;

A ploughed-up field and a grubbed-up plantation.

And then we are through and racing away,

As your sleep-shocked inhabitants face up to the day.

Oh! Profondeville, Profondeville!

How deep run your waters?

And how still ?

Tonight I accompanied my better half to a ‘sort of evening brunch’, as the host described it, to celebrate the completion of a private penthouse flat. This is not any old flat. Split over five levels, pristine white walls, razor sharp lines, geometry recalling Mondrian, fabulous views out over the city from every window, meticulous attention to every single detail and decorated with privately-commissioned works of art, it is a labour of love. To celebrate its completion, the owners with such fine taste generously invited everybody who had been involved in the project, from the architects through the cabinet-makers to the artists, to come and celebrate together. It was a very special evening. Clearly, everybody who had been involved in the project, including my better half, had enjoyed him or herself and was – rightly – proud of the result.

If you’d like to know a little more about the members of the European Economic and Social Committee then you might like to take an espresso with our Vice-President, Anna Maria Darmanin (Malta, Employees’ Group) and her selected guests. Once a week Anna Maria conducts a short thematic interview. The latest is Benedicte Fiederspiel (Danish, Various Interests Group) talking about the Single European Act. Others to date have included Irini Pari (Greek, Employers’ Group) on Your Europe, Your Say, Jillian van Turnhout (Irish, Various Interests Group) on the Citizens Initiative, Laure Batut (French, Employees’ Group) on energy issues and Leila Kurki (Finnish, Employees’ Group) on innovative work places.

The plenary session continued today with a rich agenda. First off, Vice-President Jacek Krawczyk presented the draft 2012 budget, unanimously agreed by the Bureau yesterday, to the assembly. This was followed by expert debates on, variously, the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (the rapporteur was Franco Chiriaco, and Italian member of the Employees’ Group), a single European railway area (the rapporteur was Raymond Hencks, a Luxembourg member of the Employees’ Group), the role of economic and social councils and similar institutions in the new world governance (the rapporteur and co-rapporteur were, respectively, Madi Sharma, a British member of the Employers’ Group, and Agnes Cser, a Hungarian member of the Employees’ Group), energy market integrity and transparency (the rapporteur was Edgardo Iozia, an Italian member of the Employees’ Group), and the development of a European road safety area (the rapporteur was Mr Jan Simons, a Dutch member of the Employers’ Group). Sitting alongside my President through all of these debates was not only a fascinating illustration of the breadth and depth of our members’ expertise but also gave me a real sense of Europe in the making. There was also an interesting ‘technical’ opinion with the prosaic title of ‘the application of emission stages to narrow-track tractors’. As our kilted Scottish rapporteur, Brendan Burns (UK, Employers’ Group), a forester himself, pointed out, here is one example of the devil being in the detail. Narrow-track tractors are an ubiquitous part of the agricultural landscape in southern Europe, working in vineyards and vegetable plots and terraces. But it is not easy to build such tractors whilst respecting the Union’s policy on emissions and the European Commission has therefore proposed to delay full implementation so as to allow the manufacturing industry to adapt. Prosaic it may seem, but as Burns informed the plenary, these tractors have sales of around 26,000 units a year and represent about 16% of the the new tractors market in the EU. In closing, Burns’s opinion points out that if the Commission had carried out an impact assessment when, in 2005, it decided to extend the emissions policy to agricultural and forestry tractors, it would have discovered the exceptional situation for which it was now obliged to legislate. And Burns should know – he has several tractors!

In the evening, whilst the plenary continued, the President and I hotfooted it back to our headquarters Jacques Delors building for the formal opening of a photographic exhibition entitled City on the Move. The exhibition, curated by photographer Georges Michel, is a selection of photographs illustrating the theme in both direct and more subtle ways. One of my favourites, for example, is a picture by Anne Dhont of a huge cruise liner dwarfing an otherwise typical Venice canal scene. And I liked Evelyne Andre’s image of a lone man, back to the camera, walking along an abandoned railway line in the heart of Paris. As our President, Staffan Nilsson, put it in his opening speech, these cultural activities bring our corridors and public spaces to life.

Today’s plenary session enjoyed a second heavy-weight visit in the person of Michel Barnier, member of the European Commission with responsibility for the internal market, who came to talk to the subject of the Single Market Act. The single market is an area where the EESC has traditionally been very active, its activities focussed through the work of its Single Market Observatory but also plugging into the contributions of the national economic and social councils and similar institutions. Barnier, coming from a member state (France) where the consultative function is strongly enshrined in the constitution, is always appreciative of his visits to the Committee. Explaining his vision, he recounted how he had been deeply marked by the 2005 referendum result in France. It had led him to realise that the EU and its single market risked being perceived as only being there ‘pour les grands et les gros’. Barnier sees the single market as the platform on which much else can be built. The firmer the platform, the more that can be built above it. Reviewing my notes, I see one observation which, curiously, mirrored the sentiments of Barroso’s questioning about a better future; ‘We don’t,’ insisted Barnier, ‘have the right to be nostalgic.’

In his opening remarks, President Staffan Nilsson made a hard-hitting statement about the situation in Libya. And then, after Barroso’s departure the plenary session debated and adopted a declaration on the situation in the southern Mediterranenan countries. The Committee calls strongly for peaceful and democratic transitions with the full involvement of employers’ and workers’ associations and all other organisations representative of civil society, underlining the need for constructive and fruitful dialogue between such organisations and the political authorities guiding the transition process. The Committee itself stands ready to help all political efforts to ensure peaceful change through capacity building , support for consensus building and the establishment of structured and representative civil dialogue. The Committee regrets the lack of coordination between the EU’s institutions and the member states in addressing the situation and urges better coordination, including support for civil society as a strategic component of the new overall approach.

This afternoon’s plenary session got under way with a visit from the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, who came to speak about ’European economic governance in action’. Barroso’s wide-ranging analysis was sober and sobering. The cost of the crisis has, he underlined, been very heavy in human terms. The challenge is to ensure that these costs do not endure. (You can read his speech here.) During his responses to members’ questions, Barroso recalled that post-war generations of parents had always sought to provide a better future for their children and their grandchildren and that this had until now been a viable prospect. Announcing with happiness and pride that he himself had become a grandfather three months ago, Barroso explained that he now frequently asked himself the question as to whether we can really say that the future for our children and grandchildren will be better. As you can see from the picture, the observation made everybody sit up and think.

This morning I was interviewed by an academic, Roger Dale, a Professor of Education at Bristol University, about the genesis of Erasmus Mundus, the EU’s version of the Fulbright Programme. As the former responsible Head of Unit in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture when the programme was developed, I was happy to share my recollections and some papers with the professor and my thoughts were briefly once again suffused with the thrill of the chase – for, once the initial concepts had coalesced into a viable overall vision, that was what the experience had been about, a chase; for support (political and administrative) and for resources (budgetary and human). And then came the biggest thrill of all – success. At the time, it all seemed horribly stressful – not to mention the stamina-draining grind of small project programme management. But, encouraged by the good professor to look back, I see now that it was a huge privilege – to have been ‘in at the creation’ of a programme that is going from strength to strength and that, just like the Fulbright programme, will lead an open-ended life because it just makes sense from every point of view. Indeed, both programmes, Fulbright and Erasmus Mundus, are excellent examples of enlightened self interest.