Goke Frerichs

From a managerial point of view, this was potentially an extremely heavily-charged and fraught plenary session. On the agenda were: two distinguished guests (Barnier and Chastel) and debate; presentation and debate of the outcome of the Committee’s Florence biennial conference on education to combat exclusion; thirty-five opinions, not all of them uncontroversial, for debate and adoption; and, last but not least, adoption of amendments to the Committee’s rules of procedure and to its Members’ Statute in the light of the Lisbon Treaty. The rules of procedure debate and vote was potentially the most fraught of all. Until the eve of the plenary there were still some major differences between the Groups on some provisions and to adapt its rules the Committee requires an absolute majority – 173 votes – in favour. One of the reasons why the Committee is less attractive to journalists is, I am sure, that its basic working method is quintessentially consensual and here, once again, ‘consensus broke out’. As the President of the rules of procedure panel, a former Committee President, Goke Frerichs (Employers’ Group, Germany), put it, the fact that the Committee is able to overcome internal differences and forge consensus like this is one of its undoubted strengths.

The plenary session this afternoon was addressed by Michel Barnier, European Commissioner with responsibility for the Internal Market and Services, who had come, at his request, to report on the Commission’s initiatives relating to the international capital markets. Refreshingly, the first thing he did was to put his prepared speech to one side (though he was careful to praise its excellence and the good work of his staff) and then he delivered a from-the-heart spontaneous speech. To give you a flavour, here are the ‘soundbites’ I noted down. He had been ‘terribly scarred’ by the 2005 referendum result in France. He did not believe in the thesis of inevitable decline, and nor did he believe in the thesis of ‘fatalism’ – for as long as Europeans were not fatalistic. On the other hand, he warned against nostalgia. What he and his fellow Commissioners were trying to do was to instal ‘true governance’ and ‘true regulation’ and to ‘put morality and ethics back into the system’. He believed profoundly that ‘the financial markets should be put at the service of the economy and not the contrary.’ He spoke of three imperatives arising out of the crisis: we should draw the lessons, we should play collectively, and we should race our faces to the horizon. For Barnier, it was a question of ambition. Did we Europeans still want to be at the top table in twenty or thirty years time? I couldn’t note anymore because his pen ran out of ink and so I loaned him mine!

Yes, the Bureau met again today. Time does go fast. This time there was a heavy political agenda, with discussions about fleshing out Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty (participatory democracy) and amendments to the rules of procedure (upstream of the October renewal of the Committee), but also the current budgetary situation and its consequences. Last and not least, the Bureau appointed another senior official; Jean-François Bence, a French national and longstanding Committee official, was appointed Director of Consultative Works (with particular responsibility for external relations, agriculture, fisheries, forestry and the environment, and energy and transport. This was the last such senior appointment that needed to be made. Now, at very long last, the new establishment plan for the Committee’s administration, approved unanimously by the Bureau in December 2008, is about to be fully in place. It may have taken a long time, but it feels all the better for that.

Farewell, Julien....

In a recent post I wrote about how I had met a young and very active blogger, Julien Frisch. Julien was a perceptive and at times caustic critic of the European Union’s policy and legislative processes, but he was above all a European democrat, seeking to bring light where there was shade and to encourage discussion and debate where there was little or none. What made Julien’s activity even more remarkable was that he blogged anonymously; ‘Julien Frisch’ was a pseudonym. You can read why ‘Julien’ chose to blog pseudonymously and why he decided to stop here. His act has introduced me to a new term; cyber suicide. There is literary and sci-fi potential in this. Indeed, I am sure that somebody, somewhere, has already written a story on the theme. At a dinner party in the States I was asked why I was blogging. I explained that I wanted to humanise the role of Secretary General and also the ‘Eurocracy’. It is the reason I finance this blog privately and the reason I write about much more than ‘work’. It is also the reason why, I am clear in my mind, I will in my turn commit ‘cyber suicide’ the day I am no longer Secretary General. In the meantime, though, I would like to salute ‘Julien Frisch’ for having maintained such a lively and active blog. I am sure we’ll hear more from the man behind the blog in the very near future.

Harper Lee’s classic was published fifty years ago today (a fiftieth anniversary edition is currently fifth in the list of best selling paperbacks in the UK). I read an excellent article by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie yesterday (here), extolling the book’s virtues. Ngozie Adichie writes interestingly about Harper Lee’s depiction of the three major manifestations of American tribalism: race, class and region. Mmm… I suspect other analysts would add some more categories to that list. But it is true that Harper Lee wrote with an extraordinarily broad sweep and took on social issues with great confidence. ‘Sometimes,’ Ngozie Adichie argues, ‘novels are considered “important” in the way medecine is – they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you. The best novels,’ she continues, ‘are those that are important without being like medecine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre. Harper Lee’s triumph is one of those.’ Amen

To get myself ‘in the mood’, I dug out some of my old American albums for a listen before I left for the States. There are some songs that immediately transport you back somewhere, and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ is one of those for me. It was September 1976, in a new friend’s room in the Goodhart Building, Logic Lane. ‘Born to Run’ was on the turntable and, for the first time, I read the lyrics on the cover and realised that Springsteen was, like Dylan, singing poetry. I still think that, thirty-four years on. It’s a towering piece of work. Indeed, the whole album is magnificent; a brilliant flash of America’s rich seam of romanticism: ‘In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream/At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines/Sprung from cages out on highway 9,/Chrome wheeled, fuel injected/and steppin’ out over the line/Baby this town rips the bones from your back/It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap/We gotta get out while we’re young/’Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run…’

My flight arrived at 09.20, Belgian time, and I went straight to the office and back into the brutal reality of a probable zero growth budget and its consequences. Already, in New York, my President and I discussed strategy and tactics. Back in Brussels, I relayed our considerations to the Vice-President with responsibility for the budget, Seppo Kallio, and the man, Staffan Nilsson, who, as the probable next President of the Committee, will have to preside over a Committee which was ready, willing and able to take on the role and activities prescribed for it by the Lisbon Treaty but which will get no new resources to do them. Even as we were discussing matters the Parliament, Council and Commission were negotiating an inter-institutional agreement about the new post-Lisbon budgetary procedure which, predictably, made no mention of the other institutions. The situation will be discussed next week by the enlarged Presidency and subsequently by the EESC’s Bureau. Watch this space!

This lunchtime I visited a standing exhibition in the UN headquarters building entitled ‘Ayiti Kanpe’ (Creole for ‘Haiti Standing’). The exhibits took me back to Hungen and Bruges (see past posts). There were pictures of January’s devastation, and awful statistics to confirm the ghastliness of it all (I’ll cite just one; 75% of schools were destroyed). The exhibition nevertheless carries a message of hope. The UN, which suffered so much itself (over one hundred dead), is busy helping the country back onto its feet. At the end of the exhibition is a mural with all of the UN workers killed in the earthquake and in the middle, staring out ruggedly, is my former student, Jan Olaf Hausotter. I still find it hard to believe that he was sitting in my Brussels office, wearing his usual big grin, just eight days before the catastrophe. The UN has set up an archive, well worth a visit, here. Postscript: the same evening, on my flight back to Europe, I opened my complementary copy of the Financial Times and read ‘Hurricanes set to blow away fragile Haiti progress.’ Bruno Lemarquis, UN Development Programme Director for Haiti, is quoted as saying ‘It’s a race against time, and time is not in our favour.’ Was there ever an unluckier people than the Haitians?

Over the years, a large number of governments have given gifts of various sorts to the UN and many of these are displayed throughout the building. Wandering around in a break, I therefore came across a 1970 gift from Turkey, which is a copper reproduction of the oldest known peace treaty. It was signed between Hattusilis, the King of the Hittites, and Ramses II, the King of Egypt. Its provisions include eternal friendship, lasting peace, territorial integrity, non-aggression, extradition and mutual help. And all this in 1269 BC. It makes you think.

This morning we were addressed by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. Putting such issues as poverty and food and water scarcity in a global context, he insisted that economic and social councils and similar bodies have a crucial role to play: ‘I have rules and regulations and protocol restraining me constantly,’ he said, ‘but you can speak out. You can challenge your leaders and politicians. Strengthen your roles and enhance participatory governance.’