Graham's blog Friday 9 May 2008

Published on Fri 9th May 2008

Parliament re-assembled in Brussels this week after a week's break. We marked the tenth anniversary of the decision to create the Euro, which is currently worth around 80p against 68p a year ago. Unfortunately for me, I am paid by the UK government in pounds which now buy fewer euros, though living in Langport my expenditure is still mainly in sterling. In ten days' time the European Commission and the Central Bank are likely to recommend that Slovakia joins the euro on 1 January next year, becoming the 16th country to join.

Climate change is increasingly occupying our energies as we try to get agreement on the four new laws proposed by the Commission. My colleague Chris Davies is Parliament's pilot on Carbon Capture and Storage and is doing a remarkably thorough job. He argues that every new coal fired power station should be fitted with machinery to capture its carbon emissions and that existing stations should be retro-fitted with it as soon as possible since coal emissions account for 24% of CO2 emissions in the EU (see Chris's website for details).

I was furious to discover this week that the UK Treasury will pass on to communities affected by last year's floods only 31 million of the 110 million pounds we have been allocated from the EU's solidarity fund, on the basis that we will lose the equivalent amount from the UK's EU budget rebate. The rebate has for years worked against the distribution of EU funds in Britain since it goes into lining the Treasury's coffers.

The European Commission is taking the Italian government to Court for failing to implement properly the waste management plans put in place a decade ago; this has led to the current waste disposal crisis in southern Italy. The new government in Italy is expected to keep in office the Emergency Commissioner for Waste appointed by its predecessor; but results thus far have been disappointing.

Good news for bird lovers and those of us who have been campaigning on this issue: the European Court of Justice has forbidden the hunting of birds in Malta this spring. Malta refused to comply with the European Commission's final warning last October; and though the hunting season started in March this and another judgment in the pipeline should prevent it from now on.

While the EP was in recess last week the second of 28 satellites under the EU's Galileo SatNav programme was launched and successfully positioned in earth orbit. It carries an atomic clock accurate to within less than a nano-second a day. The whole system should be operational by 2013.

The agreement reached between Parliament and the Council (the 27 member states) on an EU policy governing return of illegal immigrants fell apart again this week. Some member states refused to accept the safeguards MEPs insist on; and even in Parliament the Socialist MEPs are beginning to wobble. I published a pamphlet recently on the need for a broad approach to migration policy (see www.grahamwatsonmep.org); some member states simply want repressive measures and fail to see the importance of migration to the development of poor countries, who gain ten times more money from remittances of foreign earnings than from development aid.

I will be at Europe Day events in Taunton and Exeter today, then campaigning with Annette Brooke MP in Poole and with Sue Farrant in West Dorset. In the evening I speak at an ecumenical meeting on combating world poverty at Dorchester Baptist Church. On Saturday I open the Wiltshire LD conference in Swindon and speak at a twinning dinner in Taunton. On Monday I shall be in Cornwall before heading back to Brussels.