Graham's blog entry 15th June 2007

Published on Fri 15th Jun 2007

Slovakia's journalists appeared to have great fun on Sunday and Monday with the matter of whether the party of controversial populist and former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar might align with the European Liberal family and send its MEPs to my group. I have never regarded Meciar as a Liberal, but I know that a reform faction within his party believes his days are numbered (he had a serious heart attack some months ago) and wants to re-position the party as a centrist, pro-European force. They had hoped to field a candidate to defeat Meciar at their Party conference last Saturday: in the event Meciar came back, almost from the dead, the challenge faded and the party is still run by the same old right wing eurosceptics. But to everybody's surprise, Meciar announced from the platform that he was "in negotiations" to take his Group into the Liberal and Democratic family. My Sunday was dogged by phone calls from Slovakia's press and of course I had to say there are no such talks at all. My Group had even declined his party's invitation to send an observer to their conference. I suspect it was a set-up. He wanted to prevent his party's reform wing from gaining ground so said something I would have to dismiss, thereby depriving them of any hope. Meciar is no Liberal. But Slovakia currently has no Liberal Party and needs one. I hope his Party's reform wing wins next time.

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On Monday the EP played host to another big inter-parliamentary meeting on the plight of the EU's Constitutional Treaty. The meeting brought together those members of national parliaments of all parties who follow EU affairs and understand how it works. We are all worried that - at the Inter-Governmental Conference due to be launched at next week's European Summit - member states will fail to agree a revised Treaty. Britain and Poland are being very difficult, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic only marginally less so. A failure would plunge the EU into a real crisis and could well result in a smaller number of countries - probably those in the euro and those planning to join it - going it on their own. All our LibDems present at the meeting take the view that the essence of what was agreed in the Constitutional Treaty must be preserved; but at Westminster many of our MPs do not.

What's really at stake is whether - as agreed in the Constitutional Treaty - we can abolish the unanimity rule for decision making in some sensitive areas in favour of majority voting. An example of why this is sorely needed came just this week when the German Presidency failed to get agreement of all 26 other member states to setting at EU level minimum guaranteed rights for defendants in criminal legal proceedings (the right to access to a lawyer and to be given an interpreter if necessary, etc). Britain was one of the countries blocking it!

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The EU's governance and the agenda for economic reform were prominent issues in my discussions with Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels on Monday and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates in Lisbon yesterday. They come from two opposing parties, the two main political parties in Portugal, but both are European federalists. When Portugal takes over the Presidency of the EU from Germany at the end of June they will be working together to save the EU. Their British equivalents (unless Gordon Brown surprises us all) will be working to take the stuffing out of the EU's Constitutional Treaty, which in effect means to destroy the Union.

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My 5 am start on Monday (to go to Brussels) was repeated on Tuesday, to come back to my constituency to interview for a successor to the excellent Laura Pike, who has run my constituency office for the past five and a half years and is moving to live in London. Fortunately, I had a strong field of candidates to choose from. Watch this space for the name of Laura's successor.

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Turkey's small business federation sent a delegation to Parliament this week to lobby for progress in Turkey's accession to the EU. The German EU Presidency wants to open another three 'negotiating chapters' in preparation for Turkey's eventual membership, but France and Cyprus threaten to veto the move. Strident anti-Turkish voices in France and elsewhere have contributed to domestic difficulties in Turkey. And should the army again take control they would again ruin the country's economy and cost the EU billions of pounds in lost trade. The value of our exports to Turkey alone is half as much as our exports to the whole of Africa.

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I took my LibDem parliamentary committee co-ordinators to Lisbon on Wednesday evening for meetings all day Thursday with Portuguese government ministers, to discuss the agenda for their forthcoming EU Presidency. They appear to have a competent team and a well-defined set of priorities which, given a following wind, should be achievable. But I suspect they will be so preoccupied with bickering between member state governments at a fractious inter-governmental conference on the Constitution that they'll derive little pleasure from the experience.

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Today I am visiting the Mendip Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to look at conservation projects, Bristol Port to learn about challenges in shipping and the European Movement in Tavistock, Devon to talk about my parliamentary work. Tomorrow I leave home again at 5 am to fly to Stuttgart to address the annual conference of Germany's Free Democrats, our sister party there. I hope to get a lie-in on Sunday.