The European Parliament in June 2005

This month started with the fall-out from the No votes in France and Holland and ended with MEPs succumbing to the full force 10 of Tony Blair in Messianic mode. Among those who had favoured the Constitution nobody really knew what to do next. Some deluded themselves that No might really mean Yes; some wanted to postpone rather than abandon other referenda; others, like the Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff, wanted a new “pluralistic and parliamentary convention with a broader mandate than the previous one”. Everybody recoiled from this. There is really no point in recalling, in reinforced form, a body that got it so horribly wrong first time.

 

Looking forward financially, the majority of MEPs want the EU to spend more money in the period 2007-2013. Though less than the Commission proposed, the Parliament’s bid for £600 billion over seven years is still about £30 billion more than the Member States are prepared to agree to. (£600 billion is 1.07% of the EU’s Gross National Income. The British government, with other contributor countries, wants to cut this back to no more than 1% of EU GNI)). Of course it’s not only how big the budget is, but what it is spent on that matters. MEPs would like to spend more on science and research, but the majority of them can’t bear the thought of repatriating agricultural spending, and rather like the idea of trying to create jobs through state spending, and so want to add £150 million to the social budget “to stimulate employment”. Conservative MEPs support the 1% ceiling: Labour MEPs support it too but this makes them pariahs in their own high spending Socialist group; Liberal Democrats want to renegotiate the CAP and the British rebate.

 

So on the two big issues of the month MEPs were flailing around. Enter Tony Blair in the second session of the Parliament, held in Brussels, with a Message to lead them out of the Wilderness. Europe must get real and modernise its policies and its budget priorities. We must realise that we are becoming less competitive not more so. We must turn to the solutions embodied in reports commissioned for the EU but never taken up because they are new and radical. Commentators in Britain particularly have tended to play down the effect of Blair’s speech, and move on to ask questions about whether he can deliver and how we have heard this visionary stuff before. But to the MEPs listening in the chamber there was an invigorating breeze of something new, of old assumptions being questioned and old habits cast aside. Take this passage:

 

“Just reflect. The Laeken Declaration which launched the Constitution was designed to “bring Europe closer to the people”. Did it? The Lisbon agenda was launched in the year 2000 with the ambition of making Europe “the most competitive place to do business in the world by 2010” We are halfway through that period. Has it succeeded? I have sat through Council Conclusions after Council Conclusions describing how we are “reconnecting Europe to the people” Are we?”

This interrogatory demolition of sacred shibboleths is just something “not done” by Prime Ministers before the European Parliament, not even by Mrs Thatcher. It really has fallen to the British, in Blairspeak, to deliver the wake-up call. His speech was well received. The arrival of so many English-speaking MEPs from Eastern Europe has given an immense advantage to anyone speaking English, who automatically gains an immediacy, sympathy and contact with the audience that is simply not possible in other languages. And of course Britain has a good story to tell. Blair could tell French and German MEPs that we have not abandoned the social agenda and give as proof that in Britain long-term youth unemployment is virtually abolished. They are miles from achieving that. This starting bounce of the British Presidency may well come to nothing much, but if nothing else his performance demonstrated what a difficult task we have in the Commons.

 

Earlier in the month we held the vote on a motion attempting to censure Commission President Barroso on the grounds of conflict of interests. It was defeated by 589 votes to 35 with 35 abstentions. Interestingly, the five Conservative MEPs who had originally signed it, and then refused to withdraw their names when asked by the leadership not to support a doomed UKIP initiative, finally saw the light: 2 voted against what they had previously signed; 1 abstained and 2 failed to vote at all. The same session saw Roger Helmer expelled from the EPP-ED group for his public support in May of the UKIP MEP Nigel Farage. Apparently I was incorrect in saying that Helmer had the slogan “In Europe but not for long” removed from his web site at the request of the party. This was a rumour put about by the Labour party the more successfully because it rang all too true. He now sits on the outer rim of parliamentary seats, accusing the Conservative MEPs of “sleeping with the enemy” and no doubt looking forward to the reappearance of Robert Kilroy Silk (not seen since 5 May) which will give him a fellow outcast to talk to.

 

If any of you suffered as Lloyd’s Names you might be interested to know that the Parliament’s Petitions Committee is still pursuing your case by calling on the Commission to give an answer about the extent to which the first non-life insurance directive was correctly transposed and applied by the British authorities. The Commission has refused to answer this one before and I suspect that it will not give the answer the petitioners want now. It has shown no enthusiasm for taking up the case and will probably continue to give it a wide berth, but we shall see.

 

This month MEPs finally agreed a new “Members’ Statute” to have effect from the beginning of the next mandate in 2009. It gives all MEPs the same salary of 38.5% of a judge at the European Court of Justice (about £55,000), subject to EU tax. This will end the situation where some Eastern European MEPs receive one tenth of the salary of their Italian colleagues. Travelling expenses will be in future be paid on the basis of reimbursement of actual costs.

 

I spoke at an event in Taunton this month, to promote “sustainable packaging”. In Cornwall they are turning old bottles into tasteful wine glasses, and Wiltshire farmers are growing maize to be made into food trays. But one thing I heard alarmed me: by 2030 the population of the South West counties is expected to have grown by 1 million. Where will they all go?

  

  

Caroline Jackson MEP