April started off in Brussels with a Committee week (Fisheries and Regional Development), several Canadian visitors (whether the EU should ban the import of seal products is a big issue at the moment) and a discussion about the upcoming "Telecoms" package.

Post weekend (and my car's MOT), Brussels again, with someone shadowing me from the Industry and Parliament Trust. It included a "mini-plenary" session, with a debate (as ever late at night) and vote on my report on Rights Based Management in Fisheries. I am relieved to say that it went through with a very large majority. Of much more general interest on that day, though, was the launch of a campaign to introduce a Europe-wide "amber alert" system for missing children. The weekend took in visits to Dunfermline (a map making business and a continental style cafe) and St Andrews (plans for harbour improvements and the unfortunate loss of Blue Flag status for the East Sands).

After that came a third week in Brussels, for Group meetings and a seminar, organised along with colleagues from the Committee of the Regions, on how conflicts can arise between environmental legislation and economic development and the best way forward in resolving them. I am grateful to representatives from the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the STUC for the very capable way in which they illustrated the kinds of considerations involved, using the Lewis Wind Farm project as an example.

Much of the following Strasbourg session was concerned with budgetary matters but there were also particularly interesting debates on the rise in food prices and on volunteering, with a call for 2011 to be made the Year of Volunteering. In the course of the week I also had a useful meeting with a Commissioner about language learning and the role of minority languages in the EU.

April is ending with time in Scotland, providing me with a much needed opportunity to catch up with some paper work but including, too, a meeting in Edinburgh with another Commissioner (just changing his portfolio from transport to justice) and visits to the North East. Of the latter, more in my next column.

On these or any other issues, contact my constituency office on 0141 243 2421,
email info@elspethattwoollmep.org.uk or write to Elspeth Attwooll MEP, 142 Queen Street, Glasgow, G1 3BU.

Greetings

Another wall dividing a city has been torn down by the EU's 'soft power'without a drop of blood being spilt. This week the barriers separating northern from southern Nicosia in Ledra Street were formally removed by President Christofias (Republic of Cyprus) and Prime Minister Talat (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus), allowing trade and normal shopping to resume.
Those barriers had been in place longer than the Berlin Wall, though in reality Berlin was divided for a little longer than Nicosia.

By pure happenstance, the person proposed as Cyprus' new EU Commissioner also underwent cross-examination by MEPs this week in a joint meeting of the parliamentary committees she will report to. Androula Vassiliou, who the committee chairmen have recommended for approval by Parliament after a bravura performance, will not change the political balance of the Commission: like her predecessor Markos Kyprianou, she is a Liberal (though in her case denomination d'origine controlee); but she changes the gender balance positively.

I was in Bulgaria on Monday addressing a meeting on the right to freedom of movement in the EU (for my speech see www.grahamwatsonmep.org) and meeting the leaders of the three coalition parties. I advised the prime minister to sack his interior minister, Mr Petkov, against whom evidence of mafia connections is piling up in an investigation by the Agency for National Security. In a western European country he would already have offered his resignation, but this is the Balkans. Nonetheless the investigation and his inevitable departure from office are a fruit of the reforms introduced to join the EU and a sign that Bulgaria is on the right track.

Greater transparency in Brussels also took a step forward this week with the adoption in committee of a report recommending a register of government lobbyists. There are now more lobbyists in Brussels than in Washington and, with the Commission publishing the names of all members of policy advisory committees, sunlight will - in the words of US high court judge Louis Brandeis - 'be the best disinfectant'. The pilot of the measure, Finnish Conservative Alexander Stubb MEP - was appointed later the same day his country's new secretary of state for foreign affairs. His predecessor's text messages to a stripper had been published on the internet.

Yesterday, with the opening of the NATO summit in Bucharest, Greece blocked the granting to Macedonia of a roadmap to NATO membership. They cannot accept the country calling itself 'Macedonia' and attempts at mediation failed. This is stupid, since Greece, like the rest of us, has an interest in the collective security NATO provides: but the Macedonians hardly helped their own case by deliberately provoking Greek ire, for example by calling their main airport 'Alexander the Great'. Whatever that airstrip and collection of Nissen huts is, it does not merit the title.

Paddy Ashdown was in Brussels this week to launch a book he has co-written with Robert Cooper, a former adviser to Blair and senior EU civil servant.
Paddy has lost nothing of his flair for presentation and continued to wax lyrical over a small supper afterwards. This year sees the 25th anniversary of his victory in securing election as MP for Yeovil. I was pleased to see he is still going strong.

I welcomed visitors groups from Bideford College in Devon and the Tamar branch of the European Movement; and spoke by videolink to a conference of EU school history teachers in Bristol. Today I will be in Gloucester to talk to county councillors about EU developments and later in Salerno in Italy to campaign for one of my colleagues who is a candidate in their general election. From there I travel to Finland for an EU Liberal Summit hosted by prime minister Vanhanen, to plan our strategy for the 2009 election.

Regards

Graham




Graham Watson MEP
Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar and Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament

Greetings

While most MEPs returned to Brussels on Tuesday after a short Easter break I set out for Kosovo with three of my colleagues to meet government and opposition representatives there and to be briefed by UNMIK and KFOR on the security situation. It was my first visit to Pristina and I was fortunate enough to have among my companions Slovenian LibDem MEP Jelko Kacin, a former defence minister who knows the whole of ex-Yugoslavia. We met the President and the Prime Minister and leaders of the political parties and came away convinced that the overwhelming majority of Kosovo's Serbs and Albanians want to make a multi-ethnic society work but are being undermined by forces in Belgrade which seek to destabilise the area north of the river Ibar, by radicalising the majority Serb population there. For the EU to take on responsibility for security in Kosovo is indeed a big challenge. If the chronic unemployment (officially 33% but really over 60%, the Minister of labour told us), poverty (average PCI just over EUR 1000), electricity shortages and dearth of water are not problem enough, the armed attacks earlier this month (by Serbs on customs points, the railway, police forces and the court house in Mitrovica in the north) stretch substantially the resources and the mandate of the 300 or so NATO troops there. Unless the result of Serbia's forthcoming election brings about a change in policy, Kosovo could turn out to be the first real test of the EU's nascent common foreign and security policy. And if we want stability on our borders we cannot afford to fail.

Back in Brussels my Group moved successfully to add to the agenda of Wednesday's statement on the recent European Council (summit) meeting a statement on Tibet. We invited Mr Karma Chophel, Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament to attend the session and obtained an open invitation from Parliament for the Dalai Lama to visit at any time. Most of my colleagues agree with my assessment that to boycott the Olympic Games would not be appropriate; indeed, the Dalai Lama himself is against a boycott. But we should use every political and diplomatic channel to express our opposition
to continued Chinese illegal occupation of Tibet and oppression of its people.

The European Commission has released EUR 229 m in aid to Palestine. It will help rebuild infrastructure (essentially electricity, water, waste management and schools), will fund activities of the UN Relief and Works Agency and will allow the Palestinian Authority to pay key staff. It is not much of a substitute for a lasting peace, but without it the plight of the Palestinians would be much, much worse.

Reading the UK press this week one might think that all that matters in Europe can be decided by the French President and the UK Prime Minister; that the EU hangs on the dispositions of Paris and London. If people believe it they are deluding themselves. Both countries are important; but their combined population is only one-fifth of the EU's and their combined
economic strength probably less.

Regards

Graham


Graham Watson MEP
Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar and Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament

Greetings

The European Confederation of Police, which labours under the wonderful acronym Eurocop, has spoken out against the postponement until 2009 of the new generation Schengen Information System. Originally due to be operational by March of last year, this database is a powerful tool in tracking the movements in and out of the EU of those suspected of serious crimes. The main delays have been technical, but some are political. The EU's data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx, believes the large scale processing of personal data from frontier controls could lead to great intrusion of individual privacy and that this will lower public trust in government. Our LibDem MEPs on the civil liberties committee agree with him.

Ministers from the 27 national governments were still arguing this week over how far to cut the greenhouse gas emissions from cars when the steel industry surprised us all by launching ULCOS II, a massive programme to cut CO2 emissions from steel plants. This agreement will put up to 300 million euros into research into carbon capture and storage.

Good news too on the developments in energy distribution. German energy giant E.ON, under pressure from the European Commission, agreed to "unbundle" (sell) its power distribution grid and concentrate purely on generation of energy. This upset the German government, which is fighting the Commission's plans to liberalise the energy sector; but it may save the
company a potential fine of several billion euros. Swedish company Vattenfall is hinting it will do the same with its German subsidiary.

The 27 Justice Ministers agreed in principle last week that people under police protection should be eligible for such protection in every EU country. The case which triggered this is that of Dutch former MP (Liberal) Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a muslim who has received death threats for criticising the interpretation of the Koran used in many islamic countries.

My Group's main concern this week has been whether to grant discharge to the European Commission for the 2006 accounts. As a result of parliamentary criticism based on audit reports, many new controls have been put in place.
Most of my MEPs believe that if we threaten to suspend discharge the Commission will go further. Some of us argue that Parliament should put its own finances in order before proceeding too strictly with the Commission.

I spoke to visitors this week from St John's school, Marlboro and from the Thomas Hardye school, Dorchester: I also spoke by videolink to pupils from schools in Hayle, Truro and Falmouth on Cornwall's St Piran's Day.

This weekend I am again hosting an 'awayday' event for some of the staff of my Group. Communication is so important to achieving one's goals.

Graham

Graham Watson MEP
Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar and Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament