Graham's blog entry 25th May 2007

Published on Fri 25th May 2007

We were in Strasbourg his week for formal debates and votes. Paul Barltrop of BBC TV West (Bristol) made a rare and welcome appearance (UK media is notoriously bad at covering the EP) and was, I think, surprised to find there was so much going on that would be of interest to their viewers.

For example, we voted to approve a deal which will cut the charges levied for cross-border calls by mobile telephone service providers to reasonable levels. As a Liberal I do not like regulation of prices; but here is a clear case of market failure, or possibly cartel operation, and our intervention will save millions of holiday makers this summer from paying through the nose for services which cost little to provide. The measure will have effect for only three years thanks to a Liberal amendment; but that should be long enough to see market forces prevail in cutting costs further.

Heavy Israeli lobbying succeeded in getting a majority of MEPs to vote against closing our debate on the Middle East by adopting a resolution. "Now is not the right time", went the rather spurious argument, "with trouble in the Lebanon and a visit to Israel by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana". The Israeli arrests on the West Bank on Wednesday night immediately changed minds back, however: with the result that we will have a further debate, with resolution, on 6 June. The European Commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who understudies Solana, came to see the political group leaders individually during the week, in near desperation. Hitherto she has been an Israeli sympathiser. Even she now argues that we need to get more money through to the Palestinian Authority.

Parliament's most high profile debates were those with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi (Tues) and Netherlands Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende (Wed). Both outlined their views on how we move forward to reform the EU after the 'No' votes to the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands. The contrast could hardly be greater. Prodi is a conviction politician in his late 60s who has been PM before and President of the European Commission. He was the one who moved to get others to commit to sending an EU force into Lebanon during last summer's war. He is now helping Angela Merkel to get the EU back on track. Balkenende is 20 years younger (and looks younger still; bearing a striking resemblance to Harry Potter) and has little clue about how to lead his country forward or resolve the crisis it has caused. Politics can be pretty raw at times: and MEPs reacted almost intuitively, praising the former and sending the latter home with his tail between his legs. (My speeches in these debates can be read at http://www.grahamwatsonmep.org/speeches/000107.html and http://www.grahamwatsonmep.org/speeches/000108.html or watched on film at http://www.alde.eu/index.php?id=182 )

The presence of two Prime Ministers is not coincidental. They came before us as part of an initiative I launched last year to allow the EP to receive member state Prime Ministers to discuss what to do to make the EU fit for purpose. Previously we had invited only Heads of State to address the whole House. The issue of the constitutional impasse continues to dog the EU. As Javier Solana said when he received the Charlemagne Prize last week for his work on EU foreign policy "Just when we should be at our most alert, just when the world's demand for Europe is at its highest, the Union has turned inwards, immersed in a sterile institutional crisis".

Parliament also welcomed Gary Kasparov, chess ace and now Russian dissident, who was prevented from leaving Moscow last weekend to attend a dissident event in Samara running in parallel with the EU-Russia summit. He addressed first our main political groups and then the Conference of Group Leaders. His message was uncompromising: Russia is becoming an authoritarian dictatorship and the EU must stand up to Putin in defence of democratic and human values.

On Wednesday I threw a farewell dinner party for our departing Bulgarian MEPs. Following last weekend's EP election in Bulgaria my Group will have only five Bulgarians as opposed to seven hitherto: four will come from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a net gain of one; and one from the National Movement Simeon II, a net loss of three. But since not all our 'appointed' MEPs - who continue also to exercise a national parliamentary mandate - were candidates this time, we'll welcome four new colleagues at our next plenary session on 6 June.

Today I visit North Devon to speak at a Youth Conference at Braunton School; then travel to London to join Italian Liberal leader Valerio Zanone at a conference at the London School of Economics. On Saturday I commence a week's holiday with my wife and children, so will write again the week after next.