Graham's blog entry for 12th January 2007

Published on Fri 12th Jan 2007

Happy New Year! Mine kicked off in Bucharest, where I joined the Prime Minister on New Year's Eve to celebrate Romania's entry to the EU and found myself again today to address the annual conference of his National Liberal Party.

Parliament resumed on Monday and on Tuesday I hosted a European Lib Dem conference on the future of the Euro. On the first of January Slovenia became the 13th country to join the currency; the deputy governor of their central bank joined us, along with finance ministers from Belgium and Hungary and British speakers Sir Nigel Wicks (adviser to Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher respectively and one of the architects of European Monetary Union) and Graham Bishop, adviser to Salomon Brothers and expert on the Euro. Despite attempts to ridicule it in the British press, the single currency has been a great success: witness the fact that the Bank of England had to hike interest rates to 5.25% yesterday while the European Central Bank rate remains at 3.5%, making it much cheaper for continental businesses to borrow and invest than for their UK counterparts.

I was pleased to publish another book this week. 'The Power of Speech' is a selection of the speeches I've made in the five years I've led our Group in the European Parliament and is available at the ridiculously reasonable price of nine pounds fifty (including p&p) from my office: cheques please to Graham Watson MEP, Bagehot's Foundry, Beard's Yard, Langport, Somerset, TA10 9PS.

I pinched the title from the poet Shelley, who wrote in a letter to a friend about another friend who had become a government minister: 'He appears to have lost the ability to think, but alas not the power of speech.'

On Tuesday the Russians repeated their trick off turning off the gas taps, though this year to Belarus rather than the Ukraine; it sent Hungary scurrying to borrow from its reserves. With perfect timing, the European Commission launched on Wednesday an ambitious plan for an EU-wide energy policy which would also combat climate change by cutting carbon emissions from wealthy countries by 30% by the year 2020. It was attacked by Greenpeace for being insufficiently ambitious: in my view it is probably the best that can realistically be achieved in the current political climate. Together with last autumn's proposals to cut energy use and last year's package to promote renewables it marks a very substantial policy shift. I hope the EU member states will agree to it, not least because it would challenge the USA to make a similar move.

In fact, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (who has accepted an invitation from Ming via me to address our autumn conference in Brighton, by the way) was in Washington on Monday to discuss this and other matters with George W. Bush. Trade Commissioner Mandelson gave an upbeat account of a possible breakthrough in the Doha Round (the main subject of the talks). I am more optimistic that we'll see action to slow the pace of climate change than for a new multilateral trade agreement or knocking enough good sense into the Americans to stop them storming Iranian consulates in Iraq or bombing alleged Al-Qaeda bases in Syria.

Among my meetings this week was a meeting with India's ambassador to the EU to seek information and action in the tragic case of the murder of my constituent Stephen Bennett of Cheltenham. I spoke to Stephen's father Carl, who told me his son's trip was a last minute decision, a toss-up between Goa and Tenerife. Had he chosen the latter he would almost certainly have been spared a horrible gangland-style fate in which his badly beaten body was left hanging from a tree. The response of the Indian authorities has not been satisfactory and I have asked the ambassador to get me an urgent report.

Just as my Group welcomed MEPs this week from the two new member states, bringing our number to over the 100 mark for the first time ever, so the European Commission welcomed a new Commissioner from each of Bulgaria and Romania. Both are Liberals, bringing the number of Commissioners from our Liberal family to ten (out of 27), more than from any other party. Bulgarian Commissioner Meglena Kuneva and I toasted the occasion with champagne at our New Year's reception - in my case one of my last glasses before my annual alcohol-free four week period. If I sound grumpy in next week's letter, that will be the reason.

Last Friday I had constituency engagements in Plymouth. This weekend I'll be in Bristol on Saturday and possibly in Wrington, North Somerset, on Sunday. On Monday it's back to Strasbourg for Parliament's first formal sitting of the year. Hey, ho.