One of the annoying traits of the European Union is that it unerringly concentrates on what seem to many of us to be the wrong agenda items. This month French protectionism continued to flourish on many fronts in flagrant disregard of France’s treaty commitments to a free market. French and German companies now own many of the utilities serving us in the South West of England without the faintest hope that a British company could muscle in to offer French or German consumers the same choice in their country. The Commission moves against this kind of thing extremely slowly and the truth is that it is very difficult for it to take a powerful Member State to Court, get the necessary judgement and fine the country concerned (in the event that the judgement is ignored) within a time frame that is consistent with business imperatives.

 

Meanwhile, MEPs continue to mull over the need for a European constitution when the most urgent need in many of their countries is to reduce unemployment by creating more liberal jobs markets. There were demonstrations in Strasbourg this month by students (who have a good chance of getting jobs) against the new short-term jobs contract the French government hopes to bring in for the young unemployed who can’t find jobs. I pointed out mildly to the woman who runs my hotel that the contract, though not the lifelong one French students would like, is at least “better than nothing”. I could see she didn’t really agree.

 

Because the EU seemingly has no answers to the big questions, the supposed blunders it makes on small items look larger in the public mind and continue to feed Euro scepticism. Take this month: first we had the idea that the EU was going to         introduce a law that would ban old-style mercury barometers. In fact the story emerged from a discussion document on how to reduce mercury in the environment which we debated at our first March session. Barometer makers in Britain (but not apparently elsewhere: are they such unworldly old craftsmen that they never read the newspapers in Bavaria or wherever?) objected that what was proposed would mean a ban on mercury barometers of the traditional style and end the repair of existing historic barometers. So MEPs inserted a clause in the document drawing attention to the need for an exemption from any ban on mercury for use in such barometers. The proprietor of Barometer World in South Devon pointed out, with many others, that emissions of mercury were thousands of times higher from power stations than could possibly be the case from their workshops. (We used to play with this stuff on the bench in chemistry class at school).

 

Hardly had the barometer makers relapsed back into their age-old practices than we were being assaulted (verbally) by irate church organists and organ makers. Someone in the Department of Trade and Industry had told them that new EU laws on the recycling of electrical equipment and removal of hazardous substances from the environment meant that lead could no longer be used in organ pipes. Any amount over 0.1 per cent (of what was never clear to me) would need a special EU derogation or exemption. Church organs would never be the same again. Disaster loomed.

 

Now these laws were familiar to me. I had chaired the Environment Committee when they went through. No one, at any stage or from any country, had then raised the possibility that they would apply to organ pipes. Clearly they did apply to the electric machine giving power to the organ. Yet some nincompoop in the DTI, when asked, saw a whole new, beautiful regulatory possibility opening out in front of them, and had given the organists’ representatives the view that, yes, it did apply to the pipes. I am confident that it doesn’t, and that the EU never intended that it would. But the whole incident gave a bad name to good intentions.

 

By contrast the affair of the ship “Saruna”, which I have been looking into, showed that the EU sometimes lacks common standards and powers where there is a case for them to exist. The Romanian-owned, Panamanian-registered ship was first detained in France as unfit to sail but then allowed to sail to Falmouth where inspectors found 37 deficiencies and 17 grounds for detention. There is apparently no EU law in force that would stop these sub-standard ships operating between EU ports, a potential danger to their crews and to other ships. A newly published draft EU law is designed to prevent this but has only just been referred to the Parliament. Meanwhile the Saruna lies off Falmouth, under repair, and the crew are relying on charitable donations.

 

This month the Parliament adopted proposals that will make it easier to register and protect local speciality foods. We in Britain already have EU protection for                36 products including Cornish clotted cream, Gloucestershire cider and several           West Country cheeses. Manufacturers of locally identified products can apply for               protected designation if they find their product in competition with goods that pass themselves off as the genuine article and take the same name. There is an active campaign to get such protected designation for the Cornish pasty. But Bowyers of Trowbridge are not fans of the process since they make Melton Mowbray pork pies and are now resisting the idea that these can only be made in Leicestershire.

 

One of the major issues the Parliament debated this month concerned the pace and extent of EU enlargement. We expect Romania and Bulgaria to join next year, with Croatia possibly joining in 2008. MEPs are getting nervous of going beyond that for many reasons: fear of importing the chaos and quarrels of the Balkans; dislike of yet more competition after more low-wage economies enter the EU; apprehension about financing more poor countries and reluctance to increase the E U budget; self interest in still having some claims on that budget – as we do for Cornwall –claims which might disappear if more poor countries join.

 

So the Parliament adopted a rather nervous resolution, calling on the Commission to submit a report by the end of this year on the EU’s “absorption capacity” and asking it to offer a definition of “the nature of the EU, including its geographical borders”. Conservative policy was, and I hope still is, to support further EU enlargement, including the admission of Turkey. A bigger, looser EU would suit us a lot more than a constitution-building smaller knot of countries.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Caroline Jackson MEP