Graham's blog entry 17th November 2006

Published on Fri 17th Nov 2006

The nicest weeks are those which start and end with constituency events. Friends at Somerset County Council had kindly invited me to join the High Sheriff on Monday in cutting the ribbon to open the new Cocklemoor foot bridge in Langport. It is part funded from EU grants. So I delayed my departure to Strasbourg and spend a pleasant morning nearer home.

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Much of my work in Strasbourg was in leading my colleagues through the laborious process of allocating committee chairs and vice-chairs and internal responsibilities within our political group. In the European Parliament this happens every thirty months, at the beginning and at the halfway stage of the legislature. The charm of leading a Liberal group is that colleagues generally prefer anarchy to conspiracy. We managed nonetheless to reach agreement between the leaders of the different national political party delegations which we will put to a vote on 29 November.

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While the Queen's Speech was being debated at Westminster the European Parliament held its equivalent but less festive annual debate on the European Commission's priorities for next year. Unlike at Westminster, the leaders of the political groups left the responses to their deputies; for us, these are debates which rank lower than preparations for a European Council ('summit') meeting, for example, where the real political priorities are set.

We also heard from the European Court of Auditors, who have once more declined to give a positive 'Statement of Assurance' about the EU's accounts. This time, however, the auditors have come under heavy fire, not least from the UK's House of Lords. The Lords point out, in a report published last week, that the auditors invariably give a clean bill of health to the European Commission's accounts; but that the nub of the problem is the failure of national finance ministers to carry out proper checks on spending of EU funds by their own government departments.

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Parliament voted on Thursday to adopt at second reading the Commission's 'Common Position' on the Services Directive, which means we will now start opening up cross-border trade in services. As with the creation of a European single market for goods, the potential for boosting economic growth is massive. Protectionist pressures have prevailed to prevent the wholesale liberalisation which Liberal Democrats would have liked to see, but half a loaf is better than no bread.

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The highlight of my week was the debate I secured on the atrocities in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip. My speech can be found at http://www.grahamwatsonmep.org/speeches/87.html. If there can possibly be a silver lining to such a dark cloud it may be in the renewed pressure for a lasting settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Spanish PM Jose Luis Zapatero and Turkish PM Erdogan used a conference last weekend to call for a new international peace conference. Kofi Annan will take up the matter during his valedictory address to the UN on 18 December. And it may just be, after Israeli writer David Grossman's powerful speech at the memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin, that the mood in Israel is changing. (For Grossman's speech, see http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/784034.html)

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World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz provided the most surreal moment of my week. He came to Strasbourg to meet various people and requested a meeting with me. I had no idea why and nor, it seems, did he. In an airless protocol room in the middle of Tuesday afternoon when I had scores of other matters pressing on my mind I found a public servant tired (maybe jetlagged) almost to the point of incoherence who wanted to talk about economic development in Africa. When I asked for his views on (the country of) Gabon he told me he knew the man's son-in-law! Having occasionally suffered myself in the same way I had every sympathy with him, but wasted no more time.

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Today I will talk to school pupils in Ashburton and attend the opening of a new Europe Direct centre in Paignton. Tomorrow I attend the Western Counties Lib Dem conference in Bradley Stoke, Bristol. On Sunday I leave for Beijing and three days of talks with Chinese MPs before a visit to the site of the Three Gorges dam.