Graham's blog entry Friday 7 March 2008

Published on Fri 7th Mar 2008

The European Confederation of Police, which labours under the wonderful acronym Eurocop, has spoken out against the postponement until 2009 of the new generation Schengen Information System. Originally due to be operational by March of last year, this database is a powerful tool in tracking the movements in and out of the EU of those suspected of serious crimes. The main delays have been technical, but some are political. The EU's data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx, believes the large scale processing of personal data from frontier controls could lead to great intrusion of individual privacy and that this will lower public trust in government. Our LibDem MEPs on the civil liberties committee agree with him.

Ministers from the 27 national governments were still arguing this week over how far to cut the greenhouse gas emissions from cars when the steel industry surprised us all by launching ULCOS II, a massive programme to cut CO2 emissions from steel plants. This agreement will put up to 300 million euros into research into carbon capture and storage.

Good news too on the developments in energy distribution. German energy giant E.ON, under pressure from the European Commission, agreed to "unbundle" (sell) its power distribution grid and concentrate purely on generation of energy. This upset the German government, which is fighting the Commission's plans to liberalise the energy sector; but it may save the company a potential fine of several billion euros. Swedish company Vattenfall is hinting it will do the same with its German subsidiary.

The 27 Justice Ministers agreed in principle last week that people under police protection should be eligible for such protection in every EU country. The case which triggered this is that of Dutch former MP (Liberal) Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a muslim who has received death threats for criticising the interpretation of the Koran used in many islamic countries.

My Group's main concern this week has been whether to grant discharge to the European Commission for the 2006 accounts. As a result of parliamentary criticism based on audit reports, many new controls have been put in place. Most of my MEPs believe that if we threaten to suspend discharge the Commission will go further. Some of us argue that Parliament should put its own finances in order before proceeding too strictly with the Commission.

I spoke to visitors this week from St John's school, Marlboro and from the Thomas Hardye school, Dorchester: I also spoke by videolink to pupils from schools in Hayle, Truro and Falmouth on Cornwall's St Piran's Day.

This weekend I am again hosting an 'awayday' event for some of the staff of my Group. Communication is so important to achieving one's goals.