Graham's blog Friday 16 January 2009

Published on Fri 16th Jan 2009

Parliament assembled in Strasbourg on Monday for our first formal voting session of the New Year. Gaza and gas supplies still dominated the headlines and our thinking and were at the top of everybody's agenda for the first debate on the floor of the House with Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Prime Minister who has just taken over the six month rotating Presidency of the EU's Council of Ministers.

MEPs were curious, too, about how the Czech presidency will fare. Topolanek made a reasonable but robust speech about how he sees our Union, describing the Lisbon Treaty as "worse than the Treaty of Nice" (which leads one to wonder why he signed it) and defending his country's failure thus far to ratify it; but he says they will and that they are committed Europeans. He is not helped by his President's known anti-integration views or by the furore over a piece of art by a Czech artist which has been hung in the Council Building and has occasioned more than one diplomatic protest. Billed as the work of '27 European artists, one from each EU country', it turns out to be the work of just one Czech artist, David Cserny; claiming to 'demolish stereotypes by mocking them' it depicts Bulgaria as a toilet, Germany as a motorway bedecked with swastikas and the Netherlands as a lake with minarets poking out above the water. Britain is absent, to depict its euro-scepticism. Unsurprisingly, other Europeans are not amused and the Czechs are having to make copious apologies.

Parliament voted on two new laws to reduce substantially the number and quantity of pesticides which can be used by farmers and horticulturalists. We also voted to ban dichloromethane, the highly toxic active substance in most paint strippers and varnish removers. The latter was a personal triumph for me, since I've been for several years at the forefront of a campaign to gain recognition for a perfectly safe water-based alternative manufactured in my constituency by a company called Eco-solutions. For my speech in the debate or my speech in reply to the Czech Prime Minister, see www.grahamwatsonmep.org.

The power of Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament was on stark display this week as parliament voted to approve measures by four of my colleagues. A regulatory measure governing investment funds by my German colleague Wolf Klinz creates a truly barrier-free common market for investment funds: a Directive on public procurement contracts in defence and security, pilotted through parliament by another German Liberal colleague, harmonises procurement rules to make defence and security markets more open and more competitive; my Italian friend Marco Cappato successfully steered through a measure calling for greater public access to the documents of the EU institutions, and a report by UK colleague Diana Wallis endorses the common tax rules which will soon apply to cross-border mergers and transfers of assets between companies.

Parliament found time too to celebrate the tenth birthday of the euro, without which the financial crisis might have blown the EU to smithereens; and to bid farewell to veteran French Socialist MEP and former prime minister Michel Rocard, whose speech at his farewell reception was (intentionally) a litany of examples of where socialism in his country had lost its way.

In the UK, Tory Leader David Cameron said that if an election is held early this year and his party wins he will hold an October referendum on the Lisbon Treaty; and Gordon Brown spent Tuesday in Paris and Wednesday in Berlin, engaged in the co-operation without which it is impossible to govern the UK these days. The Labour MEPs in Strasbourg elected a new leader by a margin of ten votes to nine.

I presented on Wednesday the prizes in my Group's campaign to educate people about climate change (www.thechangers.eu); and I was heartened throughout the week by the number of expressions of support from within Parliament and beyond for the campaign I have launched to preside the House from July (www.watsonforpresident.eu). I hope my decision to launch the first ever public campaign will draw out other candidates so that we can have a genuine public debate.

This morning I address school pupils at Bishop Wordsworth school in Salisbury before meeting local Lib Dem county councillors there. In the evening I socialise with Lib Dem members in Bude in Cornwall. On Saturday morning I chair a meeting of our euro election campaign planning team and in the evening address the Federation of Small Businesses in Street, Somerset. On Monday I'll be in Bristol touring EU funded projects before flying to Brussels.