This month saw the end of any idea that the Conservative MEPs would, during this Parliamentary term, leave their present home as allied members of the European People’s Party-European Democrats Group and form a new group. This was the pledge that David Cameron had rashly given to right wing MPs during the leadership election last year.

 

As I and many of my colleagues had warned, the pledge was undeliverable. William Hague simply could not find the minimum of 19 MEPs from at least five nationalities who might form a new political group with us. Apart from the Czech ODS party, those available were either too small and eccentric or large enough but unacceptable. The Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party fell rather spectacularly into the latter category. Early on in the search for allies, high hopes were expressed about the like-mindedness of the PiS and the British Conservatives. Things went a lot quieter when PiS formed a government with the nationalist League of Polish Families and the populist Self Defence party, and quieter still when the Kaczynski twins (now President and Prime Minister of Poland and both from the PiS) expressed some very un-Notting Hill views against homosexuals. For good measure Mr Giertych of the League of Polish families caused uproar in the European Parliament this month when he praised General Franco and the Portuguese dictator Salazar. So the Poles were out.

 

That left, since we needed some big allies, the Czechs. But they were busy negotiating a new government coalition. And they are not necessarily moving in a Euro-sceptic direction either. The new Prime Minister, Mr Topolanek (ODS) has just appointed a Foreign Secretary, and it is not Mr Zahradil, who was keen on a new alliance with us.

 

So we have fallen back on a Joint Declaration with the Czechs:

·        That together with other like-minded parties of other countries including existing and candidate members of the EU we will found the Movement for European Reform, dedicated to the ideals of a more modern, open, flexible and decentralised European Union, ready to face the challenges of the 21^st century, and

·        That at the beginning of the next Parliamentary term (July 2009) our elected members will establish a new parliamentary group, which other like-minded parties will be invited to join, and whose purpose will be to give leadership and representation to these ideals.

 

Will it work? I shall be very surprised if it does and not at all disappointed if it doesn’t. Given that we have trawled the highways and byways for allies pretty intensively over the last few months, it seems unlikely that we will come up with serious respectable ones over the next 2-3 years. And remember that we need to have 7 or 8 good candidates lined up: it would be disastrous to establish a new group only to see it collapse if someone walked out. Is it realistic to think that there are ideal new reformist allies, people you would be really enthusiastic about, lurking in Bulgaria, Romania or Croatia?

 

Does it matter? Yes it does. MEPs have power to make and shape laws. Our natural allies are the large centre right parties of Germany and France, not Ruritanian nationalists dedicated to preserving the CAP, which Eastern Europe has quickly come to love. If David Cameron really wants to set the party on a new course he needs to form an alliance for reform within the EPP. Instead he has signalled his intention to leave for an unknown destination, leaving his MEPs (who have still not met him) to live through a very awkward 3 years as members of a group their leader has rejected.

 

The parliamentary session was early this month, before the situation in Lebanon deteriorated. We held an interesting debate on the climate change impact of aviation, and backed a report calling for the inclusion of aviation emissions in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, although Conservative MEPs did not back the proposed introduction of kerosene taxes. (Footnote: I am sometimes asked how we keep in touch with the party back home to ensure that we are saying roughly the same thing. This debate necessitated such contact but the reply from London was that all options were open until the Quality of Life policy group reports. We did try)

 

MEPs gave the green light to the Structural Funds package for 2007-2013. Around €308 billion (approximately £200 billion) will now be available to spend from 1 January 2007. Some of this will come to the whole of the South West through the European Social Fund (for training and re-training schemes). I recently visited just such a scheme at Pinehurst in Swindon, which offers training and support for disabled people. But Cornwall will get the lion’s share as England’s only Objective One area, a sad accolade in a month that has seen the announcement of 800 job losses in the china clay industry.

 

770,000 EU citizens have now signed the www.oneseat.eu petition to end MEPs’ trek from Brussels - our main home - to Strasbourg each month. Conservative MEPs have now written to the President of the Parliament to demand full disclosure of his negotiations to buy the Parliament buildings from the city of Strasbourg. We believe that he is steam rolling through an expensive and controversial folly without seeking the authority of the Parliament’s budgetary control committee and ignoring completely the continuing scandal of rent overpayment to the city (at least £60 million over 30 years). We are getting absolutely no support from the government for our stand. All British governments seem content to let the French have their head on the issue.

 

But perhaps other issues, like the European Commission’s campaign to bring down the cost of international mobile phone calls, together with the demise of the Constitution, are having a positive effect. Something is certainly triggering a sea change in British attitudes to the EU according to the latest Euro-barometer poll. This found that public approval of the EU was up 12 points to 42 per cent of those questioned, the highest figure since 1995. We are apparently more enthusiastic than the Finns (39 per cent), Latvians (37) and Austrians (34).