The European Parliament in Spring 2008

 

I have been very busy with a report for the Parliament and have fallen behind with my monthly news, for which I apologise. In the run–up to a European election MEPs are torn between reluctance to launch into new subjects and reports (which might fall into the gap between two parliaments), and a desire to make their mark with flagship policies they can talk about in the election. We are now entering this rather disjointed phase: some parliamentary sessions are somnolent, some are action packed. I intend dealing with them through a quarterly newsletter from now until next spring.

 

You will now know who are the Conservative candidates for the European elections next summer. Or perhaps you don’t. For the record, we in the south west will be contesting 6 seats and the vote will be held under the proportional representation system where the voter selects a party list of candidates. The lists in our case were drawn up by postal ballot, and when we vote next June the seats will be divided between the  parties in proportion to the percentage of the total vote each party gets.

 

The Conservative party list, in the order in which the candidates will be declared elected is as follows: 1. Giles Chichester MEP  2. Julie Girling 3.Ashley Fox 4.Michael Dolley 5 Don Collier 6 Zehra Zahidi. You will probably have met or at least heard of Giles Chichester but it is such a big region that your reaction to the rest may well be “never heard of them!”. But they are very good candidates and we must get behind them. It is a sad fact that the European Parliament’s acquisition of greater powers has coincided exactly with the introduction of a voting system which makes it much more difficult for voters to identify “their” MEPs who exercise those powers.

 

We should win 3 seats in June next year. Who will be our new MEPs? I will be particularly glad to hand the torch to Julie Girling. Like me she has come up through local government: she lives in Chipping Campden and is a member of Cotswold District and Gloucestershire County Councils. As Gloucestershire Cabinet member for the Environment she played a prominent part in getting EU money to help with the costs of the July floods. Ashley Fox is a Bristol solicitor who was parliamentary candidate for Bath in 2001. He has been a Bristol City Councillor since 2001. It will be very useful to have another lawyer in the Conservative team in Brussels: we have been very short of volunteers for the hard slog on the Legal Committee. In the way of these things, candidates 4, 5 and 6 are also admirable but will have to spend the next 5 years hoping for the early retirement of candidates 1, 2 or 3. Then number 4 automatically becomes the next MEP. There are no by-elections, unless and until all the names on a party list are used up.

 

The issue that has been taking up my time is the draft waste framework directive, which sets the scene for European waste management over the next 30 years or so. One of the key things I have introduced is a recycling target of 50% by weight for all household waste by 2020; the target for construction and demolition waste would be 70%. Pushing the recycling rate up to 50% is perfectly do-able in the south west where our figures generally hover in the 30-40% bracket. But it would be quite a struggle in parts of this country – our worst performing local authority is Tower Hamlets which recycles only 13 % of its rubbish. At the same time I have proposed a target for reducing the generation of waste: we are calling on the member states to stabilise waste production levels at 2009 levels by 2012, and to establish waste prevention programmes over the next five years.

 

This is all easy to propose but the hard part starts now since I and my “shadow rapporteur” colleagues from other political groups have to convince the Environment Ministers of the 27 member states to  accept  our proposals and implement them. They are reluctant to do so and I shall be negotiating with them over the next few months.

 

One other bit of the directive is also relevant to west country concerns: where a waste incineration plant meets certain energy efficiency criteria it can be designated a “recovery” rather than “disposal” operation. This has commercial and public relations advantages. As landfilling waste becomes more expensive, councils are examining the waste incineration option and could now use such a plant’s ability to generate power for the local community as a positive selling point. The rising price of oil and gas means that we should not forget to use residual, not easily recycled, waste as a fuel.

 

In February the Parliament held a major debate on the Lisbon treaty (the new constitutional treaty) and adopted a resolution calling for its ratification by the end of the year. Unless Stuart Wheeler succeeds in his legal bid for a British referendum the only thing now standing in the way of the treaty coming into force is the referendum on it to be held in Ireland next month.

 

We also held an important debate on what is being done to ensure that EU law is equally enforced everywhere. MEPs are alarmed that the arrival of 10 new Member States has had no impact on the number of complaints about and investigations into infringements of Community law. We suspect that this shows that the Commission (responsible for follow up) is being too relaxed about pursuing new member states, and that, although infringements are taking place, there is not the culture of citizen involvement and activist NGOs in the new member states  that , in the existing ones, would see them reported. The Parliament is resolved to spend more time itself in monitoring the application of EU  law.

 

We learned in March that Britain will get £110 million from the EU emergency fund to help repair flood damage. Now we have only to extract it from the clutches of the relevant UK government department.

 

Gerry and Kate McCann were in the Parliament in April, to help promote the idea of an “amber alert” scheme, which would ensure the rapid EU-wide publication of the details of missing children. A very good idea, which I shall strongly support by signing the written declaration calling on the Commission to come forward with proposals.