Graham's blog entry 1st December 2006

Published on Fri 1st Dec 2006

My colleagues were gracious enough to re-elect me this week to lead them for the next two and a half years. (The spirit in which they did it was hardly gracious, but what else can one expect from Liberals!) No previous leader has ever been given - or wanted to serve? - more than five years. If I see out the remainder of this parliament it will be seven and a half. However I'm still brimful of energy and ideas and I look forward to the next 30 months.

The highlight of my week was a test drive in the new Honda Civic hybrid car. Remarkably quiet, remarkably efficient. Sadly not (yet?) being produced in Swindon in my constituency.

Probably the most important development in Brussels was the deal we struck between Parliament, Council and Commission over next year's EU budget. My colleagues on the Budgets Committee used Parliament's powers wisely to secure better scrutiny of the EU's foreign policy operations ('no oversight, no money' we told the member states' finance ministers); to prevent the member states from cutting indiscriminately the Commission's staff budget and to put more money into scientific research. Subsequently on Thursday we voted to approve the major package of scientific research measures known collectively as the 7th Research Framework Directive.

Parliament also struck a deal with the member states on getting better information at EU level for policy planning purposes. We signed off a proposal by the European Commission to improve the sharing of information from satellite images, weather records, etc to help monitor transport and environment policies, for example. Member States will have two years to comply with the new requirements.

Readers may not be aware that a huge amount of EU information is already available to the public on EU websites. Eurostat (web address:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=1090,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL publishes regular sets of comparative statistics and various other sites accessible through the EU portal (www.europa.eu ) publish sectoral information. Last week saw an updating of information available on the EU's Pollutant Information Register, for example

(www.eper.ec.europa.eu ) showing air and water pollution from industry.

Our two new Commissioners-designate (Bulgarian Meglena Kuneva and Romanian Leonard Orban) underwent their approval hearings in Parliament this week. Since both are Liberals, their performance was important to me. I'm pleased to report that each passed with flying colours.

My initiatives this week included a conference on combating the causes of terrorism on Sunday night and Monday; hosting a Group of visitors from Bath and Bristol University Lib Dem societies on Wednesday and Thursday and visiting Cologne and Vienna to spread the Lib Dem gospel (Thur-Fri). I've no constituency engagements this weekend; but still the normal mountain of constituency paperwork to look forward to.