Letter from the European Parliament, Friday 16 October 2009 (St Ives Liberal Democrats)

Letter from the European Parliament, Friday 16 October 2009

October 16, 2009 10:24 AM
Originally published by Sir Graham Watson MEP

This week the European Parliament's political groups met to discuss the agenda for next week's formal debates and votes in Strasbourg. There were also a few committee meetings. My colleague Fiona Hall MEP, one of the busiest bees in the Brussels hive, was involved in a 'conciliation' meeting, when MEPs and national government representatives meet informally to thrash out agreement on disputed issues of legislation - in this case on environmental matters. In these fora, individual MEPs can exercise considerable power.

Having chosen to sit on the foreign affairs committee I have little involvement in the nuts and bolts of legislation in this way; but there are always ways to influence government: I was part of one such attempt this week when I joined civil society organisations at a conference calling for the creation of a European Peace Corps. In practice, the EU often uses NGOs to supply civilian volunteers in area where peace building is needed; currently we have quite a few in Indonesia, for example. Some of us feel that a more structured peace corps, along the lines of the German model, might increase Europe's capacity to assist.

The Liberal group started the week in Berlin, where we gathered to discuss (in addition to Parliamentary business) prospects for the new German government with our German Free Democratic Party partners, fresh from their victory at the polls last month. They expect to secure four or five ministers in the new government, including the foreign ministry, but are already having difficulties with their Christian Democratic coalition partners over Turkey's prospects for EU membership.

I returned to Brussels on Tuesday night to meet the head of the SW Regional Development Agency. Nobody knows what will happen to the agencies under a new government next year, but the process of lobbying for EU support for government programmes in the SW must go on. It is a process in which our Conservative MEPs rarely take part because they contest the whole idea of regional governance in the UK.

Tony Blair's campaign to be the first full time president of the Council of Ministers gained a new public supporter this week in the form of Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. One is tempted to ask whether, with friends like that ….? But he now has a rival British contender. Make of this what you will, but my colleague Chris Davies MEP (LibDem, NW England) has written to the 27 heads of state and government announcing that he is a candidate for the job. The newswire Agence Europe calls it a tongue-in-cheek bid and describes Chris as a 'humourist and provocateur'.

Chris Davies can take satisfaction, however, that his work last year on carbon capture and storage is bearing fruit. On Tuesday the EU's energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs convened in London the third meeting of ministers from 21 countries around the world to discuss how to advance at Copenhagen the need for serious investment in capture and storage technology. The EU has pledged one billion euros to fund demonstration projects.

The Transport ministers reached agreement this week on the rights of passengers on maritime transport, to bring this sector into line with recent legislation on the rights of air and railway passengers. The European Commission busied itself with discussion of the problem of the 450,000 wills every year which involve assets in more than one country. They seek to make it possible for all assets left in a will to be governed by a single legal system, either that of the member state of the deceased or that of the country is which the assets or held. Currently it can prove difficult and costly for a beneficiary to receive her or his inheritance.

I was at the Sir John Colfox school in Bridport yesterday to launch a 'language learning through sport' initiative. I am now having a weekend off. I will write again from Strasbourg next week. The Polish President has signed the Lisbon Treaty. By next week we might know more about the intentions of the bouncing Czech.

St Ives Liberal Democrats