Graham's Blog Entry Friday 28 September

Published on Fri 28th Sep 2007

One of my best teams in Parliament is the people who represent my Group on the Committee for Industry, Trade, Research and Energy. I took them for supper on Monday night to talk about a range of current issues. Fortunately we are united on the liberalisation of energy markets; even our French MEPs now accept that "unbundling" (separation of the ownership of production, distribution and supply companies) is a good thing, and our Brits have to recognise the case for nuclear energy in the planning of Europe-wide energy policy, at least as part of the "mix", since dependence on nuclear generation Europe-wide is higher than in the UK. The Commissioners recently published two proposed directives and three regulations on creating such a market. On Tuesday evening the Commissioner for Competitiveness, Neelie Kroes (LibDem, Netherlands) came and briefed me and senior colleagues about her plans over supper at the restaurant Kammerzell, in the shadow of Strasbourg's wedding cake gothic cathedral.

Parliament's main debate this week was about immigration. We are finally putting in place the building blocks on a common policy to deal with it, but I was able to tell Commission and Council a) to get a move on, and b) to look at immigration not just as a threat but also as an opportunity. "Hold your next Council meeting in the Immigration Hall on New York's Ellis Island", I told them; "learn from Europe's experience on migration. If properly managed it can enrich and energise the EU." (For full speech see http://www.grahamwatsonmep.org/speeches/000119/plenary_speech_on_immigration.html.)

Parliament held an urgency debate about the situation in Burma and called for United Nations action. As it happens we had a delegation of Chinese politicians with us at the time and were able to press on them the importance of the Peoples Republic of China trying to restrain the SLORC military junta. I suspect that with the military leaders now 20 years older than at the time of the 1988 protests and with the country's economy in poor shape the protestors may well bring down the regime.

We are in the period of intense discussion about next year's EU budget. Parliament's "Rapporteur" this year is a Liberal MEP from Finland, who is doing a good job with little panache but great attention to detail. Somebody has come up with the ingenious idea of using surplus agriculture funds to make up the financing shortfall on the Galileo satellite system. There will be one hell of a fight with the member states, who otherwise claim a refund on unspent monies, but many of us believe it is worth a try.

I launched on Wednesday afternoon a pamphlet called The Case for Global Democracy in which I and my co-authors (one Christian Democrat MEP, one Social Democrat MEP and one Green) argue for the establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly for the UN. Such a global Parliament, we say, would be far more representative than the Ambassadors who currently carve up UN business - and would be answerable directly to the people of each country.

On Thursday night I took three members of my staff and seven members of the Private Officers of EU Commissioners away for a weekend in the mountains in the South of France. Unfortunately a tornado and severe thunder storms closed Nice airport that evening, so we were re-routed and arrived very late. None the less we had an excellent walk on Friday, through 6" of snow (which fell in Thursday's storm) and good discussion sessions over supper on Friday and on Saturday morning, breaking up at noon.

This week I will be in Truro on Monday, in Washington DC on Tuesday, in Ottowa on Wednesday, Brussels on Thursday and back on Friday for a LibDem social function in West Devon.