Graham's Blog entry, Friday 7 November 2008

Published on Fri 7th Nov 2008

Parliament returned to Brussels after a week's break intrigued to know whether the USA would dare to vote into office its first ever black President. It did, and immediately drew attention to the embarrassing absence of a single black or coloured face among 27 EU Commissioners, or indeed among the heads of state of government of the 27 EU member states. Given the diversity of our people, there is something wrong with our politics.

Obama's election was welcomed by members of almost all parties. EU-US relations have been particularly difficult under Bush: and though our expectations of the change Obama will bring are probably unrealistic, a new start is nonetheless welcome.

During last week's recess the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party held its annual congress in Sweden, adopting a manifesto for the European elections and stressing the need to defend civil liberties. I missed it because I took my 13 year old son on a half-term holiday, during which the heavens conspired to drench our attempts at outdoor activity: but I'm told the mood was upbeat and determined and the attendance high.

I spent Monday of this week in Cologne and Thursday in Prague, but managed to fit in a lot in Brussels in between. As part of the EU's year of intercultural dialogue we had delegations of Iraqi and Iranian MPs to entertain and a number of events promoting co-operation across the Mediterranean. Spirits were dampened, however, by the lacklustre results of a meeting of EuroMed foreign ministers on Monday and Tuesday, which managed to agree only that Barcelona should be the seat of the secretariat charged with promoting co-operation between the EU and the countries of the southern Mediterranean.

I received French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier (a former and likely future European Commissioner who cuts a dashing figure on the European right), a Bulgarian deputy Prime Minister (in town to bring news of further progress in her government's fight against corruption) and the leader of the Hungarian Liberal Democrats. I was pleased too to see my friend Robert Amsterdam, who is Mikail Khodorkovsky's lawyer and now also legal counsel to Singapore Liberal leader Chee Soon Juan. Robert addressed a meeting of MEPs at lunchtime about Khodorkovsky's brutal detention. We later discussed the demands of upholding even the right to free speech in some parts of the world.

Parliament's employment committee voted to reject the deal agreed among EU governments on the Working Time Directive, mainly because the Socialists want to exploit their opposition to it in the forthcoming European election campaign. This leaves the European Commission and Council with a further headache; they hoped their deal had finally resolved six years of wrangling about opt-outs and the definition of 'on-call' time at work. The matter must still come to the floor of the House, but I doubt we could now muster a majority to overturn the committee's decision.

Much preparation was underway in Brussels for an extraordinary meeting today of our heads of state and government, to discuss responses to the financial (and now economic) crisis. They will talk about how to ensure global oversight of banks and agree a global approach to risk, in preparation for the global financial summit in the USA on 15 November. The trouble is they discussed it barely three weeks ago at their regular October summit meeting and nobody seems to know what more can be said. Can they agree a more detailed response now than then? Or will further discussion serve simply to highlight division rather than unity? It may be a case of too much summitry failing to promote symmetry. Our national leaders should recognise that in politics the prosaic is normally preferable to poetry; they should stop grandstanding and get on with the business of doing.

I led my committee co-ordinators (our leading Lib Dem spokespeople on each parliamentary committee) to Prague on Wednesday afternoon for a supper that evening with our Liberal friends there (divided among different parties and with no MPs) and meetings the following day with government ministers. The purpose was to discuss their agenda for their EU presidency (Jan to June 2009). We met the ministers of foreign affairs, EU affairs, employment, regional development, finance and environment and came away prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt in the argument about whether their government is capable of running a successful EU Presidency. Luckily for us and them, perhaps, they will have to deal with the European Parliament for only four of their six months in office, since we rise at the beginning of May for the European election campaign.

Today I will be in Torbay to open an innovation centre, in Kingsbridge to speak to school pupils, in Taunton to open a drop-in centre for parents at a primary school and this evening back to Brussels. Tomorrow I address the Dutch Liberals' conference in Zwolle in the morning and the UK LibDem western counties conference in Salisbury in the afternoon.