SOUTH WEST FIRST
LETTER FROM STRASBOURG - May 2002
YOU CAN’T BE TOO
CAREFUL
The May Strasbourg session got
off to a slightly wobbly start. This
time it was dear old BA as the culprit.
The plane descended smoothly and the cabin crew were told to take
their seats for landing. So
far so good. Then the nose
went up, the power came on and we went up and away.
The pilot, to give him his due, told us that they were not quite
lined up correctly and had more tailwind than expected, so they were
going around to try to get it right next time.
I overheard some unflattering comments by fellow passengers, but
on the whole I would much rather the pilot risked ridicule than a bad
landing. All went well at
the second attempt.
TAKING ON MORE
Once in the Parliament the first
item on my agenda was to refresh my memory on the ground to be covered
in my meeting with Commissioner for Industry and Enterprise, Erkki
Liikanen. Because the
Swedish colleague handling a Report on the draft Measuring Instruments
Directive had moved to another committee in January, I needed to find a
replacement rapporteur from our EPP-ED (European Peoples Party-European
Democrats) Group members on the ITRE (Industry Trade Research &
Energy) Committee. And
because no-one else showed much interest (it is a highly technical piece
of legislation) I had taken it on myself.
FURTHER AMENDMENTS
The reason for the one to one
meeting with the Commissioner was primarily procedural.
We had the 1st Reading Report last year and are
presently awaiting the Council of Ministers Common Position text.
However the Commission decided to produce a heavily revised text,
which they can do under Article 250 paragraph 2 of the Treaty prior to
the Council reaching its Common Position, and we are now arguing that
this should be treated as another 1st Reading so as to allow
us to amend it more thoroughly.
BETTER OPTION
The Commission is not at all
keen on this happening because their legal services say it would create
a precedent. So I am trying
to persuade Mr Liikanen that to do it the way we propose would enable a
better job to be done, and, hopefully, without the need to go for a
second reading. This
measure has been some eleven years in the making, so far, and is
intended to replace eleven existing Directives and shows every sign of
being rather like the Schleswig-Holstein problem. Thats the one that
only three people knew the answer to, but one had died, one had gone mad
and one had forgotten the answer. All
I know is that what I thought would be a more or less straightforward
technical measure at second reading is turning out to be altogether more
challenging.
POWERS OF PERSUASION
My powers of persuasion failed
to overcome the legal eagles fears at first attempt and we agreed to
meet again after I had held a meeting with the people in the Commission
who are handling the actual details.
This should address many of the technical issues as well as some
points of substance which cause me and some representatives of the
industries involved, some concern.
SPECIAL MEETING
Immediately after this meeting I
have to prepare for a special meeting of the ITRE Committee called to
vote on a Report about subsidies to
the coal industry and the Caudron Report on the 6th Framework
Programme of European Research.
PHASING OUT SUBSIDIES
The problem with the coal report
was that in committee previously a narrow majority had voted it down
because some of us had
succeeded in adopting some amendments taking a tougher line on the
deadline for ending subsidies. Something
of an unholy alliance between the German Christian Democrats on my side,
the German Social Democrats within the Socialist group, the Spanish on
both sides (all of the above pleading special circumstances!) and the
Greens (who want to phase out subsidies soonest) decided they didn’t
like the Report. The
dominant factor in this situation is the forthcoming German election and
their strong desire to avoid trouble with the miners before the
election. Sounds rather
familiar to past events in the U.K.
Anyway the upshot was an agreement to support the original
Commission proposal unamended as a compromise.
We had to say something otherwise the proposal could lapse.
So we voted again in Committee accordingly.
IMPORTANT LEGISLATION
The Caudron Report Second
Reading is the most important piece of legislation in the research field
in the lifetime of this Parliamentary term and has taken a lot of time. We held marathon voting sessions at first reading, dealing
with hundreds of amendments and even at Second Reading there were a
couple of hundred re-introduced amendments.
Because everyone wants the legislation in place before the
official start of the programme in January 2003, there have been a lot
of informal trialogue meetings between the Council, the Commission and
the Parliament to whittle all the amendments down to an acceptable
number and content.
AGREEMENT REACHED
After much to-ing and fro-ing
agreement was reached on 34 re-drafted, so-called compromise amendments
after an undertaking by the Council that another 80 or so would be taken
into the text of the specific programmes of research.
These proposals are not subject to co-decision so we in the
Parliament have a very limited scope to amend their content.
This was why we tried hard to put the amendments into the
Framework Directive.
AN ISSUE OF
CONSCIENCE
The voting on both Reports
turned out to be very rapid and we were spared another long stint
stretching late into the evening. However
one big issue was left unresolved by these votes, namely the ethics
question over stem cell research. There
has been a long running campaign against it led by a German Christian
Democrat MEP who is a bit of a fundamentalist on the subject.
For him any research with stem cells from human embryos is wholly
unacceptable, whereas the other side of the argument says it is for
combatting diseases like Parkinsons providing the embryos are not
created for the purpose but, for example are by-products of in vitro
fertilisation. You can see it is a very sensitive topic and one which we
Conservatives treat as an issue of conscience subject to a free vote.
FRAMEWORK IN PLACE
The problem is that at second
reading any amendment requires an absolute majority i.e. 50% plus one or
314 MEPs voting in favour for it to be adopted.
Unless there is a consensus between the main political groups it
is very difficult to construct a coalition of that many votes.
This proved to be the case with a special ‘Own Initiative’
Report on Bioethics last year. In
the event the same thing happened to that Report in Plenary as with the
coal report mentioned above, because neither side of the debate was
satisfied with the text and voted against.
In this case the amendments were defeated and the compromise text
on the subject within the Common Position was adopted.
So the research community can now focus on planning their
applications for funding secure in the knowledge that the broad outlines
of the framework are in place.
CALM BEFORE THE STORM
The May session agenda overall
seemed rather quiet with no major items of parliamentary theatre to grab
the attention. This is not
to say that there were not many very important matters under
consideration, for there were plenty, but there wasn’t one of those
high tension moments which set the corridors buzzing with excitement.
However I attended three meetings about subjects which may well
stir things up in the future.
TV SANS FRONTIERES
First was a working lunch on
Tuesday about the topic of TV Without Frontiers.
This is more of an issue for the Committee on Culture, Youth,
Education, the Media and Sport but they are
in the same EPP-ED Working Group as my Industry Committee and we
were having a working group discussion.
TV sans frontieres, to give it the French title, is of course all
about frontiers, namely linguistic and cultural ones, and quotas for
foreign programmes, e.g. American ones.
That is a question of content but there is also the aspect
of platform, namely satellite, terrestrial, cable, digital or
analog television, and ownership, which boils down to fears about
market domination by Murdoch and BskyB. There will be a hearing within the working group to discuss
all this in the autumn.
DIFFERING VIEWS
On the Wednesday morning I met
representatives of the European Biofuels Association to discuss the
draft Directive on biofuels for transport.
Now this is an interesting one because it could be viewed as an
energy measure aimed at improving security of supply of energy by
reducing dependence on oil for transport; or it could be viewed as an
environment protection measure aimed at reducing GHG
(green house gas) emissions by substituting for CO2
emitting petrol and diesel; or it could be
viewed as an agricultural measure aimed at using land presently set
aside and not in cultivation for producing biofuel crops such as
sugarbeet.
Whichever takes your fancy the
chaps from the biofuels lobby were concerned that I had put down
amendments making targets indicative not mandatory.
This was born out of my experience with the Directive on
electricity from renewable energy sources and my view that flexible
targets that may be attained are better than mandatory ones that may not
(or will require such a level of subsidy as to make the whole thing not
worthwhile). The economics
of this particular proposal are distinctly borderline as are the
environmental benefits but I have noticed an awareness among some farmer
friends of the potential new business for them so if it can help the
rural economy in a different way, that meets with approval from the
green brigade, then it is okay by me.
EMISSIONS TRADING
The third meeting, another
working lunch, but cross party this time, was about emission trading.
This was organised by the European Energy Foundation.
It was significant that all those MEPs attending, bar one, were
from northern countries where the impact on industrial costs and
therefore competitiveness would be greatest.
The one was the rapporteur from Portugal.
There were four each from Germany and Britain which are the two
countries which would be most affected, not least because our industries
have already made great strides in energy efficiency and emissions
reduction, so to make more progress would be much more difficult.
This is a form of unfairness
which comes with an arbitrary system of base values.
QUESTIONS TO BE
ANSWERED
The picture is further
complicated because we have a voluntary scheme up and running which
operates on a different and
incompatible basis to the Commission proposal.
There are also queries over the scope of the present proposal
because all manner of sectors are excluded, such as transport or the
chemicals industry, which makes a bit of a nonsense in my view.
There are questions about which gases should be included, how
they can be measured and how much effect they have anyway.
And of course the green brigade will fall over backwards to
exclude the nuclear sector and avoid giving it credit for very low
emissions of GHG. Still
this represents another sacrifice to be made at the sacred altar of
Kyoto protocol, so it must be alright mustn’t it?
THE SAGA CONTINUES
Mention of the transport sector
reminds me of the sequel to the little travel difficulty experienced by
Ministers Lord Whitty and Elliot Morley along with President of the
Parliament Pat Cox and quite a few MEPs at the last plenary session in
April. Clearly this
practical obstacle in the way of parliamentarians coming to Strasbourg
was even more alarming to the civic dignitories of the city, than our
regular votes to downgrade the status and number of meetings of the
Parliament held in the city. A
letter (in English! a major concession!) signed by both the Mayor
Fabienne Keller and the President of the Town Council (la Communaute
Urbaine de Strasbourg to be precise) concerning the matter, awaited my
arrival.
STRASBOURG IS SAFE!
It seems that, acting with all
due haste, they have arranged a meeting between the President of Air
France and representatives of the Parliament during the July session,
i.e. the month after next. From
this I deduce he will be travelling to Strasbourg via Air France on the
“shrugged shoulder” flight. And
if this were not enough to smooth ruffled feathers, they shared a
further momentous piece of information in the following statement.
“Meanwhile, we are delighted to inform you that President
Chirac has reaffirmed to us by personal letter, that Strasbourg will
maintain its key role with the European Union”.
Wow. So that’s alright then.
Actually, the letter from Chirac refers to “son statut de
capitale europeene”, which sounds more like status of capital of
Europe than just a key role but either way the French perspective is
made clear.
A SUCCESSFUL DEVON
SHOW
I came home earlier than usual
in order to attend the Devon County Show.
Old loyalties from when I was constituency MEP for Devon remain
strong. Last year the show
had to be postponed due to the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak and was
held in August. This year
not only was it back to its normal mid May slot, but livestock were back
in evidence as a welcome sign of recovery.
The weather was not so good, the rain bucketed down, but
attendance was holding up despite the rain.
It was good to be there.
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