We finally gave green lights to Romania and Bulgaria, the next candidates for EU membership, in the plenary session this month. But MEPs are still wary that one or both countries may not be ready to join in 2007, and we have insisted on the right to call for postponement if either country fails to take the necessary measures on outstanding issues. These are a formidable list: in Bulgaria, we are unhappy about organised crime and the exclusion of the gypsy community. In Romania, we want to see administrative and judicial reforms, the ending of violence and discrimination against minorities (gypsies again), more efficient border controls, correct application of state aids and strengthening of environmental protection. Each new country seems to lead us further east: one of my Conservative colleagues pointed out that one fifth of the population of Moldova (east of Romania) hold Romanian nationality. German members deplored the fact that this extension of the EU's borders is being agreed without any clear idea of what it will cost. They should worry: they are the largest contributors to the budget.

 

You will probably have seen newspaper reports about the question of MEPs' salaries and allowances. The issue arose this month when we debated the "discharge" (equivalent to signing off) of the European Parliament budget for 2003. Attached to this was a resolution on members' salaries and expenses. This is important because we are still awaiting agreement between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers on something called the "Members' Statute" which would put the system on a sensible and publicly acceptable footing. Currently all MEPs receive the same salary as their national counterparts, and this is subject to national taxation. This results in huge differences, with the Italian MEPs earning 10 times more than MEPs from the Baltic States. The very poorly paid are reluctant to give up generous allowances.

 

Conservative MEPs voted for a single salary rate for all MEPs, for the travel allowance to be based on actual ticket costs rather than on the (pre cheap airlines) "kilometrage" basis, for the general expenditure allowance to be accounted for by an annual accountant's report or by presentation of receipts, and for the reform of the pension scheme.

 

Our continental colleagues were prepared to vote for the idea of a single salary and changes to the travel allowance but not for the other reforms. I suspect that they will agree to a general reform when the Council actually puts a figure on a single salary rate. Ministers came near to doing this on 26 April but apparently too few were present (too busy losing elections and referenda) to take a decision. British MEPs cannot be alone in receiving correspondence from angry constituents on this subject. If a reasonable reform package is put to us MEPs would be crazy to reject it.

 

Labour MEPs continue to undermine or fail to support their party back home. They are terribly feeble in the Environment Committee and I usually find myself putting the "British point of view" ably assisted by civil servants who have given up on Labour and the Lib Dems. More seriously, Labour MEPs this month voted, against the government's wishes, to end the possibility of "opt outs" from EU working time rules. Such opt outs are extensively used in the UK. This could mean that as from 2010 the length of the working week would be set at a rigid maximum of 48 hours and there would be no possibility of asking workers to work longer hours than that. This was a committee vote and the CBI expressed itself as "very disappointed". This is the kind of labour market rigidity that has helped to give France and Germany very high levels of unemployment in very competitive markets. It will be interesting to see if Labour's MEPs continue their revolt in the May plenary.

 

The quality of bathing water was at stake this month as we debated in committee a new draft directive revising one dating from 1976. (This was the one that the UK did not take seriously at first. Countries were asked to enumerate their bathing beaches. At the first count we had fewer than Luxembourg.) After 30 years' experience the idea is to reduce sampling requirements from 19 substances to 2, to categorise beaches, and to give better information to people, especially if water quality suddenly deteriorates.

 

Oh dear! It's about bathing water quality at beaches. Along come "Surfers against Sewage" who want the beach standards extended to all recreational waters wherever surfers may go, or canoeists, - even (perhaps) sailors who fall overboard. The local authorities are horrified at the cost, and fortunately the committee rejected this extension. There remains the question of how we categorise waters. So far the majority of MEPs, (Conservatives dissenting) do not agree with Ministers who want to add another category, "sufficient", to the "excellent", "good" and "poor" proposed by the Commission. "Sufficient" would be a probationary category denoting waters which may fail a few samples but are not really "poor". Without this intermediate status we could find some British beaches, even after spending £1,000 million in the South West, moving straight from "good" to "poor", especially after rain and run-off from nearby fields. This would not help the holiday trade. The debate continues.

 

I don't know whether the election campaign is making you reach for the tonic wine but if so, carry on. This month we dealt with a draft proposal on standards for fortified food and drink: Initially it outlawed the addition of anything to alcoholic drinks. We protested on behalf the monks of Buckfast (and other producers) and passed an amendment removing this prohibition. Apparently the Commission had not spotted the problem.

 

The Bulgarians are building a new nuclear power plant. So are the Finns. We are planning hundreds of new wind turbines throughout the South West. It was therefore refreshing to hear Tim Yeo, our environment spokesman, say positive things about the need to return to the possibility of building new nuclear power stations after the election. I am sure that we will have to do that. The trouble is that by the time we have inched towards decisions on nuclear power there may not be much landscape left that is unspoiled by the presence of wind turbines.