Graham Watson MEP

Graham's Newsletter, Friday 18th March

Published on Wednesday 23rd March 2011

Greetings

My week started last Saturday afternoon when I left the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in Sheffield to head for Delhi and 36 hours (Sun pm and all day Mon) of meetings, to prepare for a visit next month of the EP's delegation for relations with India, which I chair. From 11-15 April we will visit Delhi, Patna and Mumbai. Since I was there this time last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appears to have gone from being a hero to a zero. Many Indians are deeply concerned about the depth and breadth of corruption and the inability of the government to lead the country forward.

Back in my Brussels office at 9 o'clock on Tuesday I found that the unfolding devastation of the earthquake and subsequent nuclear incident in Japan had set the tone for the week. Energy Commissioner Gunter Oettinger (Germany, EPP) had called an emergency meeting of the EU member states' energy ministers and nuclear safety agencies that day, which agreed in principle to have independent experts carry out stress tests later this year on the 143 nuclear power plants in the EU. Almost all EU countries offered to send nuclear safety teams to Japan. I used a TV interview to call for a rapid move towards renewable energy, the potential of which is huge and was underlined in a document from the European Commission only last week, accompanied by serious energy use reduction measures to reduce our dependence on nuclear energy without increasing the use of oil and gas.

The news from Japan drowned out most news coverage of the EU summit last Saturday at which the countries in the Euro-zone agreed a 'Pact for the Euro' which involves greater austerity measures in Portugal, Greece and Ireland and a EUR 500 million fund (a permanent European Stability Mechanism, to succeed the current temporary European Financial Stability Facility) to help countries in difficulty. On Monday the 27 finance ministers approved six pieces of legislation on further economic integration. And talk of harmonising corporate taxes is now taking place in earnest, with the Commission discussing this week a proposal for a common corporate tax band for businesses in the EU. While the EU summit next Thursday and Friday will formally agree the Pact for the Euro, the European Central Bank and the European Parliament believe that deeper economic integration measures to restore currency stability in the longer term.

Our foreign affairs ministers discussed Libya at their meeting last weekend, and on Monday the EU sent a mission there to make contact with the opposition. On Thursday night the UN security council agreed on a 'no fly' zone to stop Gadhafi attacking his own people from the air. But there is little real consensus among EU countries on how to proceed; many MEPs fear that we may finally prove unable or unwilling to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi. There is fear too that Libya will send us many more refugees across the Mediterranean, while opinion polls show us that tolerance of migration from beyond the EU is falling, especially in the UK.

I welcomed visitors from the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester on Tuesday and visitors from Torbay on Wednesday, in the latter case to discuss EU support for regeneration of the Bay area. On Thursday I raised issues of human rights with China's ambassador to the EU at a meeting in Parliament. Today I was in Madrid for a meeting of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party's executive committee. Tomorrow I will be out and about in Somerset and Dorset, meeting constituents and canvassing for the Party in the morning and speaking at rallies on the environment and on a fair voting system in the afternoon and evening.

I made one awful gaffe this week. Introducing the screening of a film on Moldova I quoted a former Swedish prime minister as saying 'the trouble with politicians is that they don't go to the cinema often enough'. I had forgotten that he was later murdered walking home from a cinema. Aaargh!

Regards

Graham