Outgoing chair Jim Pollard’s report to the 2010 AGM.

Following last month’s meeting the number of names on our membership list has crept over the 300 mark. They may not be all paid up but the fact that we’re over the mark on paper means we are in sight of it in reality too. Look out for a 300 member clebration party in the not too distant future.

One of the main reasons for this landmark of course is the continued efforts of my predecessor as chair, the branch recruitment and retention officer, Jeff Apter. Stepping down as chair has not made him any less active. As well as serving the branch, he was elected at the union’s last annual delegate meeting to serve once again after a break of several years the continent of Europe’s representative on the union’s governing body, the national executive committee. This time as a job share with with Phil Hunt of the Brussels branch.

At the same meeting Jeff was made a member of honour of the union. This is a real honour given to just a handful of people who have given exceptional service to the NUJ, often in two or more capacities, over a significant number of years – usually five years or more. Jeff was nominated by the branch and in presenting Jeff with his award, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear introduced the rest of the union to Jeff’s famous catch phrase – two simple words that those of us in the Paris branch are very familiar with. No and Pressure.

Over the last two years since Jeff persuaded me – no pressure – to be branch chair, we’ve really tried to spread the work around a little more and more and more members have become active. I’d like to pay tribute to the work of Alison Culliford as secretary. Being secretary as I know well after a number of years in the job is a cycle of new members, paperwork and minutes which can take hours. Alison Culliford does a fantastic job and offers me excellent support despite, I suspect, being one of the branch’s busiest hacks.

As all members ought to know but some still forget, head office now collects all subs. We have set up special email addresses answered by head office staff to deal with both subs and press cards. There’s no need to contact anyone in the branch unless you have a problem and need us to intervene.

This hopefully has made the lives of Jeff and branch treasurer Zoe Harris a little easier. Zoe deserves an easing of the pressure after 10 years in the post.

Simon Coss has been an excellent vice-chair to the branch which is why I am proposing that he replace me as branch chair tonight. If elected, he’ll do a brilliant job bringing with him the experience accumulated as the representative of the continent of Europe on the NEC from which he stepping down this year.

Pierre Tran is still a fantastic freelance officer. Despite no longer being a freelance he knows the game inside out and has provided invaluable help to many members. He’s also a mean letter drafter and remains a star performer when it comes to screwing money out of employers who want to advertise their jobs on grapevine.

Kim Willsher has average 4, 5 even 6 email grapevines a month since taking on the post – it’s an incredible service. She, like all the committee, is a busy full-time working journalist who does NUJ work in her freetime.

I’d like to thank Barbara Casassus who as welfare officer, equality officer and bullying and harrassment offer wears a number of related hats providing invaluable but necessarilly unsung support to members in difficulty. She also orgainsed a terrific couscous do in June at the Riad Nejma opposite the Pompidou centre.

Talking of events, we teamed up with the American University of Paris in November to welcome Guardian journalist Nick Davies to Paris to talk about his book Flat Earth News.

It was a very successful event with well over a 100 people there – members and students alike – and its success was due in no small part to committee member Lennox Morrison who organised the talk and the accompanying cheese and wine with smooth efficiency.

Last year we also had our very successful recruitment party at Les Fontaines bar in the 11th. Although spoiled by a group of reprobates who insisted on singing and playing their guitars in one corner, the event reached a new different audience from our regular sit-down events. Alison found the venue and member Lesley Brown who liaised with venue. Alison and Lesley’s job was complicated a tad by the fact that the bar changed hands about three days before the event and the new guy had no idea what the booking his predecessor had taken was all about. And yes, when we went round to sort things out he did say c’est quoi le nuj?

Thanks to member Annabel Simms for organising the Christmas dinner at le Grand Bleu. It’s not easy to find a suitably sized venue with decent food at a decent price in Paris these days. But Annabel managed it. Thanks also to member James Overton for organising the cabaret and to all those who took part.

Membership secretary Diana Smith has taken on the tricky task of trying to keeping our membership lists up to to date and in sync with head office’s – and thanks a number of innovations, the two are now much closer than they’ve been for some time.

David Hayhurst is stepping from the Continental European Council tonight afer a some years as one of our delegates. Much thanks to him for trying to get the ballrolling to set up a branch in Spain this year.

I’d to thank the other general members of the committee too for their work and their wisdom: Gregor Dallas, Julian Nundy, Peter Avis, Peter Dewhirst, Matt Gil. Big thanks too to George Kandalaft for all his website work both for us and Europe in general.

These thanks are not just on behalf of me but of the members we’ve helped – we’ve helped freelances and we’ve helped staff, we’ve helped people with work issues and we’ve helped with the more general problems around living in France, we’ve helped directly and, through NUJ head office and the legal department.

We’ve renegotiated and reinvigorated our joint agreement with the French unions under which we provide mutual support in disputes and under which our members can join one of the French unions for just an extra Euro a month. Thanks to Pat Brett and Ghislaine James, the wife of member Wilf James and others, we’ve improved the information we provide on French labour law on the website.

For me looking ahead I hope to be involved in looking at how we can communicate better with members though the newsletter, the website, the grapevine. Those members who still don’t know how to pay their subs. Those members who still don’t know we’re volunteers. Those members who still don’t know what the branch can offer. We need to reach them.

Our ten reasons to join leaflet points out that we’re the only English speaking journalists group that has members welfare as its focus. It’s not easy living and working in a foreign country. The dream can easily turn sour and when it does people can find themsleves, isolated, alone and unable to talk to anyone. It can – and does – happen to journalists as easily as to anyone else – perhaps more easily if you’re a freelance. We need to be there.

Finally, thanks very much to everyone for all the support you’ve given me in my two years as chair. I’m not going away. I’ll still be active. If I’m vice chair next year you’ll probably even have to put up with me chairing the odd meeting. But I think it’s important that the job of chair is just that – that of charing and that our members look to the committee as the executive focus in the branch not a single individual.

It is a real honour to be electd by your peers to do something like this and I’m very grateful to have had the chance. Thanks very much.