Graham's blog Friday 6 February 2009

Published on Fri 6th Feb 2009

I left Bristol Airport at 0650 hrs Monday, escaping before the week's heavier snowfalls. I was in Strasbourg that afternoon to speak in the debate on the EU's second strategic energy review, devoting my speech almost entirely to the promotion of an EU renewable energy supergrid and to publicising a pamphlet I was to launch two days later "Making the green energy switch in a time of crisis" (available from my website www.grahamwatsonmep.org . At a time of economic depression, man-made climate change and over-reliance on foreign energy suppliers, a bold project like the supergrid would help on all three fronts. And though the cost would be some EUR 45 bn (or five euros for every EU citizen) the savings in fuel bills alone over the next 40 years would be five times that amount.

On Tuesday I welcomed visitors from Exeter University's Law School before leading for my Group in reply to statements by Council and Commission on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. I argued that since many EU governments were complicit in extraordinary rendition which led to torture we should be prepared to resettle some of the remaining detainees if asked. These would be people against whom there is insufficient evidence to ensure conviction yet who did not want to stay in America (where they were wrongfully imprisoned) but could not safely return home. For my speech in the debate (and in the energy debate) see www.europarl.europa.eu and click on broadcasting of parliamentary sittings.

On Wednesday we voted to approve a law obliging member states to penalise employers guilty of employing illegal immigrants. Rogue employers commit a triple offence: they encourage traffickers of illegal immigrants, they exploit vulnerable people with low pay and poor conditions and they cheat legal workers and the tax system by undercutting the legitimate labour market. The UK government has invoked a right to opt out of the legislation, however, on what is in my view a skimpy pretext.

I enjoyed supper on Wednesday evening with a former MEP colleague who is now Sweden's EU affairs minister. Cecilia Malmstrom is one of the best and the brightest 40 year olds I know but faces a tough task preparing Sweden's EU Presidency in the second half of this year, when our economies will be deeply depressed.

Since on Tuesday we had the Croatian prime minister in parliament, on Wednesday the Slovenian foreign minister showed up. The two countries are locked in a dispute over territorial waters in the Adriatic and each is lobbying MEPs about the merits of its case. Fortunately they have both agreed to accept an EU attempt at mediation; the dangers of border disputes in the Balkans are all too well known.

Palestine's President Mahmoud Abbas addressed us on Wednesday and joined the Group leaders for lunch afterwards. I was less impressed than I have been on meeting him previously. I believe any potential peacemaker will have little choice but to talk to Hamas.

A moment of near farce was provided this week when an application from Declan Ganley's 'Libertas' party (anti EU) for EU funding appeared to meet the criteria for an award of EUR 200,000. But it soon transpired that the Estonian MP and the Bulgarian MP who Ganley claimed were supporting his movement denied all knowledge of it. As a millionaire businessman, Ganley does not need the money, but would no doubt love to embarrass the EU by forcing it to pay out.

Today I am in Gloucestershire with Bulgaria's agriculture minister, here at my invitation to set up co-operation between the Royal Agricultural College and colleges in Bulgaria. I will also take him to visit the Duchy farms. Tomorrow I will be in Devon for campaign planning meetings with LibDem councillors there and tomorrow night in Bristol to address a LibDem supper.