Graham's blog entry 4th May 2007

Published on Fri 4th May 2007

Readers may remember Antonio di Pietro as the magistrate from Milan who overthrew Italy's political establishment ten years ago by exposing and prosecuting corrupt party leaders. He now runs his own political party, Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values), and recently became Minister for Public Works. Italia dei Valori is a member of the ELDR Party and sends its one MEP to my Group: at least, in principle. But Benjamin Donnici MEP has had to go to Italy's Supreme Court to enforce his right to sit in the European Parliament against a competing claim from old Communist party hack Achille Occhetto. So it was with some relief that I heard the President of the House announce last week that Donnici had been confirmed by Italy as the rightful member and could now take his seat. But I had not reckoned with the depth of the spite of Italy's political dinosaurs, some of whom now sit in Brussels and Strasbourg, towards Di Pietro: they marshalled their forces on the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee to declare Donnici's credentials unacceptable. We will mount a challenge to the Committee's decision on the floor of the House, but it may take some time and perhaps even further legal proceedings before my new colleague's status is regularised.

Fire-fighting to save Donnici cost me the opportunity to attend a meeting of Parliament's delegation for relations with China at which human rights activists gave evidence of a worsening climate for the defenders of freedom there. China is trying to become Singapore writ large, offering economic freedom and consumer choice but denying freedom of expression and assembly and voter choice. My Belgian Liberal colleague Dirk Sterckx, who chairs the China delegation, is doing his best to expose the situation and shame China's authoritarian despots.

On Thursday I joined a Socialist and a Green MEP to launch an appeal for a parliamentary assembly for the United Nations. The campaign was co-ordinated across all Europe's capital cities, with the actress Emma Thompson launching the appeal in Germany and other celebrities elsewhere. In October a big conference will be held in Geneva to take the campaign forward. The United Nations employs thousands of people in all kinds of activities right around the globe: I believe it needs the democratic oversight and control which a full time parliamentary assembly would give, to say nothing of the stimulus for global responses to global challenges which a 'world parliament' would bring.

Brussels politics have been dominated this week by foreign affairs issues. The EU-US summit caused no controversy but advanced essentially just a common economic agenda. The threat from Turkey's army not to allow the free election of foreign minister Abdullah Gul as President because his wife wears a headscarf brought a stern rebuke from the EU and did little to promote Turkey's bid for EU membership. And Russian riots outside Estonia's embassy in Moscow, willed on by Putin's people, led me and some others to call for the postponement of the EU-Russia summit planned for later this month.

My five days campaigning in the local elections over last weekend came as a welcome relief from the furious monotony of parliamentary controversy; glorious weather helped. It meant cramming all my Brussels commitments into two days this week, but since 1 May (Tuesday) was a public holiday in Brussels, many colleagues did likewise. This weekend I am taking a rest from public engagements.