Graham's blog entry 22nd June 2007

Published on Fri 22nd Jun 2007

I am trying to write this as a European Council meeting or "summit" is in progress. Summit weeks are among the busiest of a Group Leader's year. There is much political family co-ordination work to be done, interesting political developments to follow and always great pressure from the news media for comment on the proceedings. At the traditional pre-summit Liberal Prime Ministers' lunch - hosted by outgoing Belgian Liberal premier Guy Verhofstadt for the last time - we chewed over the implications of Sarkozy having persuaded Merkel to remove from the text the words "to create a free and competitive economy" and of the British and Polish obstructionism which still, as I write, threaten to bring about the collapse of the summit. We agreed to argue for a text retaining the core of the ill-fated constitutional treaty, but re-written to accommodate as many as possible of the nine member states who have not yet ratified. If Britain and Poland either cannot or will not, perhaps it will be time for the others to call their bluff.

Blair's combination of amnesia (he seems to have forgotten that he approved the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights in Dec 2000 and signed the Constitutional Treaty in Oct 2004) and obfuscation (two of his four 'red lines' are Aunt Sallies) seems excessively cautious in view of the findings this week of the massive Eurobarometer public opinion survey. This found two thirds of all EU citizens in favour of a Constitution and even in Britain 43% in favour while only 36% opposed. Bolder and more confident leadership might well end once and for all the regular replay of Agincourt. And it would certainly look better than constantly running scared of the Murdoch press.

Parliament's real business this week was in Strasbourg, where we voted inter alia to ban imports and exports of mercury after 2010 and to provide safe means of storage of the mercury in use in the EU. No, EU police will not come and impound your barometer! But yes, it will no longer be possible to use this highly toxic substance in the making of barometers when perfectly acceptable and non toxic alternatives exist. We also called on the Commission to ban the import of cat and dog fur; and, more importantly perhaps, adopted the Report of a Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry steered by my LibDem colleague Diana Wallis which calls on the UK government to compensate those who lost their savings or their pensions as a result of inadequate government supervision of Equitable Life. Diana was able to prove that the government failed to comply with EU consumer protection laws.

The BBC hosted a reception in Parliament at the licence-payer's expense to promote the BBC Parliament channel. A glossy leaflet boasted that this satellite and cable service 'offers comprehensive coverage of all the parliaments and assemblies which govern the political life of the United Kingdom'. It fell rather flat when we realised that of 126 hours of programmes per week just three 30 minute programmes are devoted to the European Parliament, though some two thirds of our laws now originate in Brussels.

My weekend constituency activities include a barbecue in Crewkerne in David Laws' Yeovil Constituency and my normal pile of casework. I've kept Saturday free to study the outcome of the European Council meeting. Failure to agree the outlines of a new EU Treaty will make it far harder for our governments to offer people the security, living standards and opportunities in life that they expect government to facilitate. Europe will slip further behind the USA and Japan and our attachment to 'national sovereignty' will continue to fan the flames of global anarchy. As I leave Brussels for Yeovil I fear the UK and Poland will be the main culprits of failure, though I continue to hope they will not prevail.