Graham's blog Friday 18 September 2009

Published on Fri 18th Sep 2009

Parliament returned to Strasbourg with the main item on our agenda being the approval of Barroso for a second term as Commission President. As I expected, he was approved, even quite comfortably. 718 MEPs were present of a total of 736. For a simple majority (the law in force) he thus needed 360 votes. Were the Lisbon Treaty in force he would need an absolute majority of MEPs, ie 369 votes. In the event he secured 382, with 219 votes against and 117 abstentions. He had made a few further concessions to the left in his speech, as I predicted, and clearly quite a number of Socialist MEPs voted for him - much to the chagrin of their leader Martin Schultz, whose handshake with Barroso afterwards was the meanest I have ever witnessed.

The defeat suffered by the left in June's elections was displayed for the world to see by the standing ovation given to Barroso after the vote by the right-wing and most Liberal MEPs. With the left sitting on their hands one could see how small a fraction of the House they now are. Liberal Democrats will welcome this in terms of economic policy outcomes, but maybe not in environmental or civil liberties questions.

Eyes are on Germany for their general election later this month. The left-right coalition has offered Opel's new owners EUR 4.5 billion of taxpayers money to stave off job losses only to have the European Commission point out in a statement to the House on Monday that state aid cannot be conditional on saving jobs in a particular location. Since Opel has plants in five EU countries, and since the Antwerp plant is said to be more efficient than that in Bochum, it looks potentially a very expensive deal for German voters. I confess to having taken pleasure in pointing this out in two interviews on German radio this week. Our Free Democrat friends are doing well in the polls in Germany and could get back into government.

There were also statements this week on the forthcoming G20 Summit in Pittsburgh and on Energy Security, with reference to the Nabucco and Desertec projects. The Commissioner put the accent on the former, a pipeline to bring gas from the Caspian to Europe independently (it is hoped) of the Russians. But few hours before he spoke, France became the latest country to sign up to Russia's Southstream alternative, placing yet another question mark over Nabucco. Commissioner Piebalgs was surprisingly dismissive of the Desertec high-voltage solar thermal power project. In my reply to the statement. I told him why he should not be. (click here for video of my speech).

We voted to approve the Commission's plan to extend aid for milk producersfor another few months, to approve a new co-operation agreement with Tadjikistan and to castigate the Lithuanian government for a new law discriminating against homosexuals (reminiscent of the UK Tories' infamous Section 28). Giving the lie to Cameron's apology for Section 28, the UK Conservative MEPs refused to condemn Lithuania and abstained!

While we were meeting in Strasbourg our agriculture ministers met in Sweden at the invitation of my Liberal friend (and Swedish agriculture minister) Eskil Erlandsson. They discussed what needs to be done in agriculture to help combat climate change, recognising its important impact. It is maintained that the EU's farm emissions have fallen by 20% since 1990, partly because we have fewer cattle. But much still needs to be done to make farming more sustainable.

I am in Paris today, will be in Plymouth tomorrow and at the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth on Sunday. Next week Parliament is in recess so I will write again the following week.