Graham's blog entry 19th January 2007

Published on Fri 19th Jan 2007

A curious feature of the European Parliament is that we divide our five year mandate into two halves, thereby effectively re-constituting Parliament every two and a half years. This has its genesis in the existence hitherto of two large political groups which, between them, have utterly dominated the institution: it is only in this Parliament that my Alliance of Liberals and Democrats has started to break the duopoly.

Hence, this week, Parliament met in formal session in Strasbourg to elect a new President (Speaker), new VPs (deputy speakers) and to reconstitute its committees. Whereas in a national parliament each party leader aspires to become Prime Minister, in ours there is no representation of the executive branch of government, though of course the President of the European Commission or one of the other Commissioners is always in attendance and invited to intervene in debates. Group leaders sometimes go on to seek election as President of Parliament, as did my predecessor Pat Cox and, this week, European People's Party President Hans-Gert Poettering.

Poettering was elected with over two thirds of the vote in a single round of voting. It was more a coronation than an election since the two big groups did a deal two and a half years ago to carve up the Parliament between them on the basis of 'buggin's turn'. I and most of my Group voted for Poettering nonetheless: he has long experience in the House, is well liked and respected and will be a competent if colourless and rather conservative President.

Fielding a candidate against him would have been pointless. Monica Frassoni, an Italian Green and the best of those from the small political groups, took less than 20% of the vote.

Poettering, a German MEP since the first direct elections to the EP in 1979, particularly wanted to be elected to coincide with the German Presidency and was able to parade Chancellor Merkel around the House the following day when she came to outline the programme of the Council of Ministers during her country's six month stint at the helm. But behind the scenes there are now serious difficulties in their political family.

A contest last week among candidates to succeed Poettering was won by Alsatian farmer Joseph Daul by just 19 votes after an exhausting four rounds of voting. This week the losers were out to seek revenge against the perceived Franco-German hegemony of the right. They managed to upset the apple cart over the choice of committee chairs, leading to turmoil in their Party and an unprecedented request to postpone by two weeks the formation of committees.

All the skulduggery in their ranks is great fun to watch and rendered more so by a surge of optimism and unity in our Group after a speech I made to them on Tuesday about Liberal Democrat priorities for the next 30 months. My suggestion that we should start now to build a coalition capable of determining the next President of the European Commission and the next President of the EP was greeted with spontaneous applause; and my proposals for action in pursuit of that aim were approved.

I had to leave Parliament on Thursday morning to return to the UK for the funeral of Wiltshire Liberal hero Jack Ainslie. Jack led us to victory on Wiltshire CC in 1985 and carried our standard in Westminster elections; he was involved in many other activities and was hugely helpful to me as a euro candidate and MEP. He was a tower of a man who deserves also a memorial service in Salisbury Cathedral. (Landing at Gatwick in a small Air France Canadair jet in high winds was not fun, nor the mad dash to Wiltshire in a hired car.)

Tomorrow (Fri) morning I have meetings in London to try to secure funding for a pilot project to put Chinese teachers in six schools in my constituency. On Friday and Saturday I'll be at a conference in Birmingham on Liberal history, giving a talk on the history of Liberal organisation at EU level.