Graham's blog Friday 2 October 2009

Published on Fri 2nd Oct 2009

I did not write last week since the European Parliament was in recess, but I used the opportunity to attend the Lib Dem Party Conference in Brighton, to speak at the opening of a new language learning unit at the University of the West of England and to pay a quick visit to Hong Kong to address the Hong Kong Democratic Party's conference on 60 years of the People's Republic of China.

I started this week in Taiwan, having travelled up there from Hong Kong. I met their education minister to talk about my Broadening Horizons Chinese language learning scheme in SW schools and their deputy foreign minister about a conference of parliamentarians on climate change, which my e-parliament initiative seeks to host in Taipei next year to look at how to implement the decisions we expect to be taken at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December.

Back in Brussels from Tuesday this week I co-sponsored with other MEPs our own conference to mark 60 years of Chinese dictatorship. We invited Tibetans, Uiyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners and a representative of the Dalai Lama to testify to the repression there. While China has seen economic liberalisation since 1979 it has seen none of the political change which has transformed other previously Communist countries; indeed, civil liberties have deteriorated under Hu Jintao. For all Tony Blair's optimism in 2005 about an 'unstoppable momentum' towards democracy in China, there is in fact no momentum. Bill Clinton was more astute when he said in 1997 that China remains 'on the wrong side of history'. I agued that the PRC is dangerous for three reasons: its substantial military build up; its repression of it own people and its support for other dictators such as Robert Mugabe and the military junta in Burma; and the possibility that in 20 years time it will be fully integrated into the world economy while remaining under authoritarian rule, thus making absence of democracy respectable.

MEPs have been active in committee and have scored a number of recent successes. We've obliged the EU to re-open talks with the USA about the transfer of European citizens' banking data without proper data protection rules. We have managed to hold up a major piece of telecoms liberalisation legislation until we get similar satisfaction on the use of telephone records by EU and member state government authorities. We've rejected (in a committee vote) a new fisheries partnership agreement between the EU and Guinea to stop a cheque for EUR 350,000 being paid to a country whose authorities have just shot and killed dozens of peaceful demonstrators; and we've required the European Commission to produce a proper impact assessment for a draft Directive on consumer rights in internet and outlet purchases, since we fear current proposals may lead to a watering down of the level of consumer protection in some countries.

I was elected this week to Chair the EP's delegation for relations with India and look forward to getting to know more of a country of which I am woefully ignorant.

My concerns about bluefin tuna fishing (see recent Letters) were justified: France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Malta joined forces to block the Commission's proposal to put bluefin tuna into Annex 1 of the CITES Convention. Much will depend now on the findings of the scientists at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICTA), who meet in November to assess the most recent findings.

Since the EP's debate on energy security on which I reported in my last Letter, Commissioner Piebalgs and King Juan Carlos of Spain have opened the biggest thermodynamic solar power plant in Europe, near Seville. Part funded by the EU, it will save 12,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.

Some EUR 300 billion is expected to be invested in the next generation of broadband access networks since Commissioner Neelie Kroes (NL, Lib Dem) clarified the rules governing such investment. A major investment in the Paris region has just been approved.

I will be leading a team of Lib Dems canvassing in Melksham, Wiltshire this morning and speaking to pupils at Pilton Community College in Barnstaple, Devon this afternoon.