Latest posts
The Danish Crown Prince and Princess come to the EESC
This evening, in what has been something of a royal week, we were delighted to welcome the Danish Crown Prince and Princess to the European Economic and Social Committee. They are instinctively shy of the limelight and their aides had insisted on a...
New Year reception at the Royal Palace
To the Royal Palace with my President, Staffan Nilsson, and Vice-Presidents, Anna Maria Darmanin and Jacek Krawczyk, for the Belgian King’s New Year reception for the European institutions. The Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Secretaries-Gen...
China: the Economist test
On the Eurostar, heading back to Brussels, I opened today’s Economist magazine and learned from an editorial that there will henceforth be a weekly section in the magazine devoted to China, just as there is one devoted to the US and one to Euro...
To the LSE
This afternoon and evening I made a quick in-and-out to London, to the London School of Economics, to give the opening lecture for Michaelmas term in a seminar series, The EU in Practice, organised at the European Institute and designed to allow...
Salome at la Monnaie
To La Monnaie this evening to see and hear Richard Strauss’s revolutionary Salome. Unfortunately, Scott Hendricks, whom we had seen and admired at la Monnaie two years ago in his brilliant interpretation of Macbeth, was ill but nevertheless...
The University of Ulster
This morning I spoke to a visiting group of undergraduate students from the University of Ulster, brought to the European Economic and Social Committee by Dr Michael Smyth (Various Interests Group, in the picture), a respected professor of economics...
Kremerata Baltica and the sublime
To the Palais des Beaux Arts this evening for an evening of sublime music with the Kremerata Baltica, its founding director and first violinist, Gidon Kremer (picture), Martha Argerich and Anastassiya Dranchuk on the piano, trumpeter Sergei Nakariako...
A Palestinian Economic and Social Council?
For the past two days the European Economic and Social Committee has been hosting a visit by the Palestinian Minister of Labour and a delegation of Palestinian civil society representatives. This afternoon I met with the delegation. The visit has be...
The Budgetary Control Committee
This morning I joined my fellow Secretaries General on the benches of the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee for public hearings in connection with the annual discharge procedure. Under the EU’s financial regulations, the S...
The annual New Year reception
Tradition has it that once a year, in January, the President and Secretary General of the EESC invite all staff to a meeting, followed by a reception. At the meeting the President and the Secretary General give brief speeches about how they see the y...
Altered States
This evening we watched the 1980 Ken Russell classic, Altered States, starring an unrecognisably young William Hurt. The sprogs found the film by turns corny but also suspenseful. We oldies rather enjoyed it, despite the corn. Like many of the be...
Operatic practices
This evening we had the privilege of dining alongside a top opera director. The purpose of this post is not to drop his name (which I won’t). Yes, there was some talk about the creative process, but the most striking aspect of the evening was h...
Strasbourg and the Captain’s vine
I travelled to Strasbourg today for work, a quick in-and-out. I used to live and work (at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) in this beautiful city and I am always happy to return. However, as I get out towards the Council of Europe...
Kodak
When I first started school a factory hooter at five to eight and another at eight o’clock signalled when we had to leave home. The hooter was at the Kodak factory in Harrow, which then enployed around six thousand people. Started in 1890, it was...
Auf wiedersen, Wolfgang Jungk!
This evening I hosted a farewell reception for one of my two Deputy Secretaries General, Wolfgang Jungk, who is retiring at the end of the month. In fact, all through this month there have been a series of ‘lasts’ involving Wolfgang; his...
The Danish Presidency (Nicolai Wammen) in the EESC plenary session
This morning the EESC’s plenary session hosted the Danish Minister of European Affairs, Nicolai Wammen, representing the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU, a Presidency which has just got under way and in the most testing of circumstan...
The EU as peacemaker
This morning’s EESC plenary session debated a, to my mind, highly significant own-initiative opinion on the role of the European Union in peace building in external relations. The rapporteur, Jane Morrice (Various Interests Group, United Kingdo...
A modern royal household
This evening I attended the vernissage at the European Economic and Social Committee’s Jacques Delors building of a photographic exhibition entitled A Modern Royal Household. It is our first cultural event under the Danish Presidency of the C...
GMOs in the EU
The second opinion on this afternoon’s agenda that demonstrated the EESC’s consensus-building mechanisms hard at work was an opinion on genetically modified organisms in the EU (rapporteur = Martin Siecker, Employees’ Group, the Net...
Prudential requirements for credit institutions
When I give talks about the European Economic and Social Committee I always stress its fundamentally consensual working methods. The Committee is an advisory body. The greater the majority that votes in favour of an opinion, the stronger that advice...
