Graham's blog Friday 11 April 2008

Published on Fri 11th Apr 2008

The 'summit' of Liberal leaders in north eastern Finland last Sunday and Monday did not attract a full house; two of our Prime Ministers and a few of our EU Commissioners were absent. Nonetheless it was a success. It will go down in my memory as the 'snowmobile summit' since we were all taken on a snowmobile safari (see photos at www.grahamwatsonmep.org) before the obligatory Finnish sauna and the formal part of the meeting. We agreed the outlines of an EU-wide campaign for the 2009 EU elections and a strategy to maximise the influence of Europe's Liberal Democrats in top EU posts. Today finds me in the Estonian capital Tallinn at an ELDR Council meeting with many of our party campaigners present, to put some flesh on the bones of that strategy.

Back in Parliament in Brussels mid-week we grappled with the issues of stability in the Lebanon, a possible boycott of the opening ceremony of the Olympics and the roadmaps for Croatia and Macedonia to join the EU. We also agreed in Committee (Legal Affairs committee) to support the proposed Directive promoting mediation in civil and commercial cross-border disputes, an area in which my colleague Diana Wallis MEP has done excellent work.

Finance ministers from the 27 member states met this week. Top of their agenda is still the ongoing difficulties faced by the banks as a result of reckless lending policies. Ministers are not panicking, but they know that they have their work cut out for a good few months to contain the fallout from the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Overseas development aid from EU member states fell last year to just 0.38% of GNP, according to OECD figures published on 4 April. Although the EU was still the biggest aid donor overall, we are far from the promise at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 to increase aid to 0.56% by 2010 and 0.7% by 2015. The European Commission discussed the matter on Wednesday and issued a Communication on how to speed up progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

Yesterday I travelled to Paris at the invitation of President Sarkozy to discuss the priorities of the French presidency of the EU which starts in July. Socialist group leader Martin Schulz was there last Friday. It is the first time, to my knowledge, that a head of state or government has invited the parliamentary group leaders individually to discuss the Presidency. We all visit the government ministers of the incoming Presidency collectively just before they assume office: and most of us take our committee co-ordinators there on a political party basis two or three weeks earlier (I will be there with my colleagues on 11 June and again with the other Group leaders on 26 June); but an invitation to a one-to-one meeting is a new departure and I walked up the steps of the Elysee Palace in the Parisian sunshine determined to get on well with Sarkozy. Fortunately, I succeeded. He is no Liberal and spared no criticism of our Liberal Democratic partners in France, who he defeated at last year's election. But there was enough common ground to give me reason to believe I can work with him.

I raised with Sarkozy the role France could play in anchoring anti-discrimination legislation at EU level. We currently have laws outlawing racial discrimination in the workplace (adopted while I was Chairman of the parliamentary committee responsible). But the EU treaties allow us to extend their scope to cover other areas of life and other forms of discrimination (on the basis of creed, gender or sexual orientation, for example). I wrote to Barroso this week telling him the Commission should get a move on; but I know the Commission is hesitating out of fear of upsetting some member states; and hope I sowed in Sarkozy's mind the idea that France, the cradle of so much progress in respect for human rights, can help advance this agenda further.