The European Parliament in October 2007 

Wormwood and gall were the diet for Conservatives at the main session of the Parliament this month. It took place after the Lisbon summit agreed the new Treaty and we had to sit through of tributes to the Portuguese Presidency of the Council and mutual congratulations among the federalists. The Treaty will be formally signed by the heads of government on 13 December – in Lisbon – and will then have to be ratified by each state in the way it chooses. Only Ireland is constitutionally bound to have a referendum

It is a measure of the arrogance of leading European politicians and their separation from majority opinion in many of their countries that they are prepared to plough ahead with the European integration agenda come what may. We can all read, and it is quite obvious that the Treaty is virtually the same as the Constitution, shorn only of such twiddles as references to the flag and anthem. It is equally blindingly obvious that our government’s “red lines” are a pretty feeble long-term defence of British interests and will be subject to interpretation by a European Court that has a tendency to come down on the side of the integrationists. But the people of France, who might have been expected to demand another referendum, are preoccupied with strikes, and their Opposition parties are enfeebled by defeat. The Dutch government is divided but seems unlikely now to have another referendum.

 

So we sat through a rundown by the Portuguese Prime Minister of the minor changes the summit had made to buy people off: the Italians get another MEP (national prestige demanded this although the Italians have a poor attendance record); the Poles will have a permanent Advocate General in the Court of Justice. The President of the Commission regretted the number of opt-outs included (that means us) but hailed the achievement of getting agreement on a common treaty for the first time among states so lately divided by the iron curtain.

 

Most MEPs echoed all this. What is the Conservative response? Our leader, Timothy Kirkhope MEP, has consistently argued for a slim-line Treaty that simply adjusts the system to more member states. In this debate he emphasised the Conservative case for a referendum and pointed out that the way the Treaty has been drafted and pushed through does the opposite of one of the aims prescribed for it in the Laeken Declaration – that the EU should engage more with its citizens, and listen to them.

 

The Treaty will increase the powers of MEPs significantly. First it extends our right of co-decision with the Council of Ministers over a wide range of policies, including – most important of all – agriculture. That means that no proposal can be adopted without the agreement of the Parliament, and MEPs and Ministers have to negotiate face to face to see if they can agree. Of course the Council also has the ability to block progress to agreement and force MEPs to back down BUT it has to be organised and pretty united to do so. In my experience this is often not the case. The only thing going in the Council’s favour is that MEPs hate having to exercise these powers – for the very human reason that it means all-night meetings and more days away from home. On agriculture this change could be particularly unhelpful as MEPs on the agriculture committee have a record of opposing reform.

 

MEPs will also gain the right to elect the President of the Commission, after the recommendation of a candidate by the EU’s heads of government. Currently the President is elected by the member states after approval by the Parliament. Incidentally the hurdle for national parliaments to block a proposal has been raised. The Constitution required one third of parliaments to object: the Treaty requires half of parliaments to get their objections together – within 8 weeks.

 

You will shortly get a chance to say who will represent you in the Parliament when these changes come into force as the party has begun the process of putting the European candidates lists together. (We are still lumbered with the “closed list” system of proportional representation where placing on the list is all-important). Regional Selection Colleges, consisting mainly of regional and area chairmen and officers plus constituency chairmen, will interview sitting MEPs and will vote by simple majority on the re-adoption of each. Those re-adopted will go to the top of the list. The RSC will also interview the non-MEP applicants and will vote on which of them goes forward to a postal ballot. This ballot will be held in March and you will have two votes – one ranking the MEPs at the head of the list and another ranking the rest of the list with the proviso that the highest-ranking woman in the postal ballot shall be ranked in the place after the sitting MEPs. This manoeuvre should give us at least 6 women MEPs. There are some good women candidates about so I hope we can put two into the two vacant places we should win in the southwest.

 

The most important legislation we dealt with this month was a directive on the use of pesticides. This has greatly alarmed the agricultural industry and those who produce “plant protection products”(EU jargon for pesticides). The Parliament’s amendments, put together by a German Green MEP, would ban all aerial spraying, cut the maximum period for pesticide authorisations, and expand the number of substances banned from use in pesticides. This has caused great alarm among farmers and producers, the latter arguing that the amendments would mean the loss of over 75 per cent of the active substances in   pesticides. They should not panic since this was only the first reading and, at the second reading, our amendments need the support of two thirds of MEPs to get through. The Germans in particular are working against this.

 

My journey home from Strasbourg illustrates one of the reasons why people don’t stand for the European Parliament. The evening plane took off then turned round mid flight because of unspecified technical difficulties. They couldn’t mend it and there were no alternatives. We were put up in hotels, then early the next morning bussed south to Basle airport for a flight to Paris Orly. When we tried to leave the plane we couldn’t because the roll-up door on the gate had stuck. Having eventually crawled out underneath it we threaded our way through chaos (half-term plus an Air France strike) to the London flight. I arrived home 17 hours late.