SOUTH WEST FIRST
LETTER FROM BRUSSELS - February 2002
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
The February Strasbourg week fell very early in the month and too close to the previous newsletter to justify the postage it seemed to me, so I thought I would send a Letter from Brussels instead. It does include a mini plenary session.
NO TIME WASTED
On Monday morning I catch the Eurostar to Brussels. During the journey I am able to put together most of the speech I am to deliver in Helsinki the following week to the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers on the theme of Security of Supply of Energy. To illustrate the benefit of uninterrupted time, it took me until Thursday evening on the train back to be able to polish off the last bits of it.
BUSY ROUTINE CONTINUES
My normal routine on arriving at my office in the Parliament around 12.30 to 1.00 p.m., is to have a go at the accumulated pile of emails, letters and other papers, so I can pass as much as possible to my assistant there to deal with before my first meeting. This is normally a preparatory meeting with my team of three EPP-ED (European Peoples Party - European Democrats, the political group we Conservatives belong to as allied members) staff members who look after Industry Committee matters. This is to discuss matters coming up in committee or the co-ordinators meeting to make sure I am fully prepared.
NUMEROUS AMENDMENTS
But this week the good news is that the co-ordinators meeting, which normally takes place after the first afternoon session of the Committee, has been cancelled. The bad news is the reason for the cancellation, namely that everyone needs the time to work on their voting lists for the energy liberalisation package first reading. So we have a shortened get-together before the longer than usual pre-meeting for all EPP-ED members of the Industry Committee or their assistants at 2 p.m. The extra time is needed for discussing the amendments, of which there are five or six hundred as well as a couple of dozen compromise amendments (these are devices whereby a whole raft of amendments on the same piece of original text may be combined in a so-called compromise version to save voting them all individually).
BOXED IN & LOCKED OUT
As a group we feel a little boxed in because the lead Rapporteur on the Electricity part of the Draft Directive is a particularly wily Green MEP from Luxembourg who has cobbled together a coalition of Greens, Socialists and Liberals in support of his own agenda. This is to include all sorts of policy aims to do with renewables and conservation which are not directly relevant to the issues of market mechanisms being addressed in the proposal. This is very frustrating for my Dutch colleague who likes nothing better than negotiating a compromise position with other groups such as the Socialists and Liberals and has effectively been locked out. The problem lies with the new Liberals co-ordinator who is a British Lib Dem who is pro competition, but pro green and rather anti nuclear.
MAINTAINING SUPPLIES
The issues at stake include a timetable for completing the liberalisation of electricity and gas markets for all consumers within the EU; what form of regulatory framework there should be to ensure competition and fair play; energy labelling of bills to show from which fuels the electricity is supplied; requirements for unbundling and legal separation which means separate accounting for and possible ownership of generation, grid or transmission operation, distribution (i.e. bringing electricity from the higher voltage grid to the lower voltage local supply networks) and supply (as it were the retail end of the business); the so-called public service obligation which means a legal duty to maintain supplies at all time (sometimes confused with a universal supply obligation meaning the electricity supplier must connect anyone who asks for it).
BETTER THAN EXPECTED
After an hour of discussion we have to break for the start of the Committee meeting where Commissioner Lamy has come for one of his regular appearances to report on trade matters. He is a very high powered fellow with considerable command of the detail of his subject and a skilfully downbeat presentation that contrives to make everything seem rather dull and boring. A great asset in trade negotiation no doubt, but not necessarily so good for retaining the attention of Parliamentarians with dozens of things on their mind. I slip out at 4 p.m. talk to Mark Boleat from U.K. Trade Associations who is researching how well they operate at European level. Then back in to join the debate on the energy package and explain a couple of oral amendments to my own amendments. This goes better than I expect i.e. I don't receive a host of objections.
SINGLE MARKET FUTURE
Committee sessions end at 6.30 p.m. and I go back to the office to carry on tackling paperwork, diary requests and forward planning for group visits to the Parliament from the South West, as well as other projects. But not for long, because I am due at a dinner discussion of the Financial Services Forum at 7.30 p.m. to talk about the Financial Services Action Plan to create a European single market by 2005. The man from the Commission spoke eloquently about their hopes and aspirations but much of it sounded more like the usual wishful thinking to me.
CENTRE OF FINANCE
For example describing the pound as too strong (the euro was worth $1.17 in January 1999 and is down to 87 cents now, whereas sterling was worth $1.56 then and is down at $1.42, which I reckon makes a euro depreciation or devaluation of 25.6% compared with a sterling figure of 9% depreciation); glossing over the defeat of the Takeover Directive by the Germans while saying a single capital market is on course for completion by 2005; and conveniently overlooking the way the City has confounded the prophets of doom, seen off the challenges from Frankfurt, and strengthened its predominance as the European financial centre.
MAKING TRICKY DECISIONS
Next morning, Tuesday, brings the voting session. We are now able to use our electronic cards in committee which save a lot of time in close votes and arguments about whether the correct number of Members in each political group are voting. This can be critical and is always difficult for me as co-ordinator to manage because I have to follow the voting list closely to give the right signal while also keeping an eye open for my Members coming and going. Sometimes we have more substitute members turn up for crucial votes then we have full members absent. We Conservatives try to ensure we bring in as many of our team as possible to make up the overall number, so as to exert a disproportionate influence within our group vote. Our Spanish and German colleagues have taken to doing the same which can present me with a tricky decision on who to stand down if we are over quota.
CLOSE CALL
On this occasion we had approximately 155 votes on the electricity part of the draft Directive, 122 on the gas portion and 66 on the draft Regulation covering cross border trading in electricity. Many were close and required an electronic check. We did slightly better than we originally feared but nowhere near enough to what was necessary to overturn most of the Green amendments. We scored a point by having separate indicative votes on the electricity and gas parts to show the former did not have majority support and keep our options open for further amendments in the plenary vote.
MAJORITY REQUIRED
The point of this is that under co-decision amendments to the legislative proposal which are adopted by simple majority of those voting at first reading and then rejected by the Council in their Common Position can only be re-instated at Second Reading by an absolute majority or 314 votes. This is difficult to obtain without the support of both the two largest political groups. Or put another way, we live to fight another day. The votes on electricity were 25 for, 10 against, 17 abstained; on gas 30 for, 5 against, 3 abstained; and on the Regulation 50 for 1 against, 1 abstention.
IMPORTANT TO EVERYONE
The voting took nearly three hours. I am sorry to use so much space describing the process, yet it is an illustration of what we do and concerns something of importance to everyone, did they but know it!
MEETING MY CONSTITUENTS
Tuesday afternoon sees me take time out from Committee proceedings to talk to a visitor group from South Devon College from Torquay. The age range suggested they were a mixed bunch of students and others. Such sessions are good for me because the questions are searching and keep me both on my toes and in touch with voters opinions at home. I also meet a chap from an energy company trying to pick my brains on the electricity vote and lobby for his particular viewpoint. I say I can't comment until I see the outcome in the shape of revised text which is true, lets me off the hook and leaves him a little thwarted. Tough.
FINDING THE TIME
Wednesday morning finds me still trying to finish my speech before my German lesson at 9.00 a.m. That lasts an hour. I make reasonable progress but it is very difficult to find enough time for more than one or two lessons a month which is not enough and too spread out for me to keep up the progress. I am determined to keep at it, I want to have some sense of what my German colleagues and, more to the point, opponents are saying.
REPRESENTING THE FORUM
After that it is office work and phone calls as well as attending Group meetings to discuss the business of the mini session. There is only one Report from my Committee, so I am relatively relaxed and can focus on our Conservative delegation meeting followed by the visit of the National European Forum in the afternoon. This is the committee which brings together the elected officers from the voluntary members of the Party, the professional wing i.e. agents and one MEP from each Region to discuss organisation and policy matters. I am this years South West MEP representative on the Forum.
FITTING IT ALL IN
Before sitting in on the afternoons briefings, I have to do an interview with Carlton Westcountry television about the forthcoming Barcelona summit and enlargement issues. They want to know why does the Barcelona European summit matter to the West Country? How does reform of the CAP and common fisheries policy benefit West Country agriculture and fishing? What are my hopes and fears with regard to enlargement of the EU? Should the Institutions of the EU be reformed? Who should the EU be run by and how should they be elected?
MOVING THE GOALPOSTS
These are big questions to be answered in a couple of minutes and I am fairly sure that I did not give definitive answers! It is a little difficult to describe how CAP and CFP reform will affect us when it is far from certain what the final shape of the package will be, though one advantage I see would be certainty for farmers and fishermen instead of moving goalposts. On enlargement it seems a good idea to bring these countries into the European family of nations but who is going to pay for it all? On reform I have my pet hobby horse about bringing individual Commissioners to account and publishing voting details from Council meetings.
MEETING WITH NEF
Later there is a reception for the NEF to meet as many of us MEPs as can attend. Then NEF members were entertained to dinner by the Bureau of our Delegation and our new leader Jonathan Evans, who was in bullish form for his after dinner speech.
E-SELECTION PROCESS
Thursday morning was taken up partly by the formal meeting of the NEF and then by votes in the plenary. The discussion before I and other colleagues had to leave to vote was about matters dear to our hearts, namely the re-selection process for candidates for the next European Parliament elections due in 2004. It would be nice to be re-
selected on the nod so to speak, but I think it is right and proper that we who wish to stand again should be put through our paces. My view is that whatever system the Party settles upon, I will take my chances, but it would be good to know and to get the process over as early as possible so we can concentrate on
the job in hand.
LOCAL ISSUE
Thursday afternoon finds me heading back home. On Friday I drive to Holsworthy in north west Devon to visit the Bio Gas plant there. I have followed this project and given it my support since early on in my first term when I was the Constituency MEP. It is something of a pilot scheme for a new way of treating farm animal waste mixed in
with a bit of food waste and treated by an anaerobic process which turns it into gas and biofertiliser. The gas runs electricity generators and produces heat which may be used for a district heating scheme eventually, while the bio fertiliser can be taken back to the farms and applied to the land.
SUPPORTING HOLSWORTHY
The plant is nearly ready to start operating, but there is a last minute hitch over how the wastes to be fed into the system are classified. A case of officialdom coming into the game, rather late in the day and the left hand of the Environmental crowd not being up to speed with the right hand of the Agriculture team who approved the project and authorised rather a lot of grant from European funds. Another factor may be the Animal by-products draft Directive which is going through the Parliament just now and where the same issue of how categories of waste are to be defined and regulated apply. On this front we are working hard to get an amendment adopted to clarify the situation and leave Holsworthy to get on with showing the rest of the country what can be done.
GOOD TO BE INVITED
In the afternoon I return to my office in Exeter to sign letters, plan my future programme, and do a couple of interviews with BBC local radio about my father's autobiography which has just been re-published. In the evening I attend the Chairman of Mid Devon District Councils Civic Dinner. It is nice to be included because many local authorities have responded to the dilemma of having seven MEPs in the region, rather than one constituency member, by not inviting anyone. Another illustration of the way in which this new system of regional PR distances MEPs from the Communities we are supposed to represent.
RUGBY DISASTER
Saturday, and I look forward to a feast of rugby watching with three Six Nations matches. A gloomy end to the week however as England let the French beat us. Poor show.
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