Graham's blog Friday 20 March 2009.

Written by Graham Watson MEP on Fri 20th Mar 2009

In planning my 2009 agenda for the six months to the elections I allowed as many Mondays as possible in my constituency. Thus this week I was able to open the new Liberal Democrat office in Gloucester with Cllr Jeremy Hilton before speaking to the young ladies at Cheltenham Ladies College under the delightful Miss Matthews. Since I had a couple of hours to kill between the two events and it was an unseasonably warm, gloriously sunny day I took a stroll around the Gloucester docks renovation project, admiring the use of EU funding in providing housing and office developments and an imaginative Inland Waterways Museum. The current economic climate is unkind to such grand designs, and it shows a little: but I have no doubt it will revitalise part of the town centre and turn an eyesore into a pleasing prospect.

The Foreign Affairs and EU Affairs ministers from the twenty seven member states were meeting in Brussels as I flew in that night, to prepare the European Council (heads of state and government summit) which has just finished as I write. It is interesting to note that in the 'General Affairs and External Relations Council', which is the formal name for their meeting, the roles of the two sets of ministers are now more clearly defined: as the EU countries develop an increasingly united foreign and security policy the foreign secretaries concentrate on these matters of external affairs, leaving the internal EU business to the EU affairs ministers. Thus, as the former reviewed initiatives such as the EU's peace-keeping mission in Chad and the anti-piracy fleet in Somalia, the latter (previously only there as observers) now increasingly take the floor on domestic matters.

I was able to despatch the business of co-ordination of my Group's positions for next week's debates and votes in Strasbourg with unusual brevity on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, which allowed my departure in good time for Stockholm, where I took our leading Liberal Democrat spokespersons to meet the ministers of the incoming Swedish Presidency of the EU. Sweden's four-party coalition government is blessed with two Liberal Democratic parties, the People's Party and the Centre Party, so many of the ministers who will chair council formations in the latter half of the year are friends. As the (Conservative) Prime Minister pointed out a little mischievously in answer to one of our questions, the two Liberal parties disagree on whether Sweden should join the euro: but in general his coalition seems to be working well and I believe Sweden will be well prepared to guide the EU through the choppy waters of economic recession and uncertainty over the fate of the Lisbon Treaty.

I was pleased to welcome to Brussels a group of students from Bristol University and to speak at the launch of a book on European Identity which is the fruit of pan-European co-operation among social scientists. I also fitted in a meeting with the Bulgarian Prime Minister to discuss assistance to his country in the fight against organised crime. But the main business of the week was the heads of state and government meeting on Thursday and Friday, preceded by the summits of the party political families which, in my case, involved a five a.m. start from Stockholm to beat it back to Brussels.

After the Liberal PMs gathering, at which Irish PM Brian Cowen joined us for the first time (his party will shortly affiliate to the EU Liberal Democrat and Reform Party), our 27 national leaders enjoyed a productive summit, if hardly headline grabbing. They agreed to use a five billion euro underspend in the EU budget for EU-wide infrastructure projects; they agreed to put 75 bn euros more into IMF reserve funds, and they undertook to help any EU country with balance of payments difficulties. Unlike the 1930s, they recognise we are all in this together and need to pull together to make it as quick and painless as possible. The UK newspapers are writing about major differences with the US. Don't believe a word of it. Co-ordination is the order of the day. And if you see anti-EU letters in the columns of your newspapers, write back in reply: remember, all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men and women to stay stumm.

Tonight I'll be at Martock Primary School for a Q&A on the recession with Paddy Ashdown, David Laws and Sam Crabb. Tomorrow I take a train to Lancaster to speak to LibDems at our North West Regional Conference.