Graham's blog Friday 9 January 2009

Published on Fri 9th Jan 2009

Parliament inched its way back to work this week in the slowest and quietest January re-start I can recall. With European elections this year, all MEPs seeking re-election will spend a lot more time than normal in their constituencies; and very few were in evidence this week.

I was in Brussels ready and waiting on Sunday night, however, to mark the start of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation with a piece of my own: the launch of the first ever public campaign for the Presidency of the European Parliament.

In the thirty years since the first direct elections to the EP, the fate of Presidential candidates has been decided in back room dealings in rooms which - until we banned it - were inevitably thick with smoke. There has always been an election, of course, with MEPs queuing up to slide ballot papers into boxes; but the outcome has been stitched up in advance, normally between the leaders of the two major parties. On only one occasion have they failed to persuade their troops to follow orders: in 1987, when Henry Plumb (UK, Con) defeated the pre-selected Spanish Socialist to become the only UK President yet.

I intend to set a precedent with a public campaign and a public debate about the qualifications of the candidates and the relevance of their ideas. The way the EU works means that being President of the European Parliament is more important than being Speaker of a national parliament.

I had topped and tailed by hand over the holiday period some 784 letters: on Tuesday I sent one to each MEP, declaring my candidacy and seeking their support, and used my Group's New Year Reception to announce I had done so. I have a series of initiatives planned over the coming months to advance my campaign, but the most important is to assure my own re-election to Parliament in June. So you'll see rather more of me than normal.

Many constituency issues require my presence in Parliament, of course. And so on Wednesday I tabled an amendment to a food labeling regulation to add cider, perry and fruit wines to the exemption proposed for beers, wines and spirits. The cidermakers were rather slow in getting their act together on this one, but my excellent staff managed nonetheless to table it 30 seconds before the deadline.

The main issues on the EU's agenda this week have been the halt in Russian gas supplies to five EU countries plus Serbia (and severe reductions in gas flowing to others) and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The EU's reaction to the first was initially to dismiss it as a commercial matter between Russia and the Ukraine, but Barroso soon saw how serious it had become and acted swiftly and determinedly. Nonetheless Slovakia had to reduce heating levels in some buildings yesterday while in the grip of one of the coldest weather spells in recent records.

On the latter the EU was all over the place: the Czechs got their new six-month EU Presidency off to a bad start by a statement which sympathised with Israel: Sarkozy showed he thinks he is still EU President by visiting the region to broker a ceasefire at the same time as an official EU delegation was there; and the EU's pleas for a ceasefire were utterly ignored by the Israelis, who know that George Bush's USA will do nothing to stop them. The least the EU can now do is to halt the entry into force of its new scientific and technical co-operation agreement with Israel.

Yesterday the EU's foreign ministers met the Czech government in Prague to discuss the programme for their six months at the EU helm, which can be found at www.eu2009.cz

Russia's Gazprom and Naftogaz of the Ukraine were summoned to Brussels to have their heads banged together.

Next week we meet in Strasbourg, where we have demanded statements from Council and Commission on both Gaza and Russia and will vote inter alia on the thorny issue of regulating the use of pesticides and other plant protection products: there is a huge agri- and horti-cultural lobby against the Commission's proposals to stop stuffing our soil with carcinogens and other poisons, which seems to have persuaded some of my colleagues. I believe the current draft legislation has struck the right balance between the needs of industry and protection of the environment.

Today I visit Intel in Swindon. Tomorrow I meet our candidates for election to Somerset County Council and then travel to Westbury to discuss the Euro election campaign plans with the executive committee of the western counties region Liberal Democrats.