SOUTH WEST FIRST   Letter From Strasbourg

 May 2000

STRESSFUL START

An unfortunate feature of the route I travel to reach Strasbourg is that since BA have consolidated their flight with Crossair (a polite way to say they no longer provide the plane), the queues to check in seem longer and longer.  This is because Crossair share facilities with TAP (Portuguese Airliner) and they both have full flights leaving about the same time.  If you time your journey carefully (cutting it fine in other words), this can be a stressful start to the day.

NEVER-ENDING TASKS

We are later than usual arriving in Strasbourg because we had to wait for colleagues on two other flights to join the bus at Basle.  That meant less time to grapple with the faxes awaiting me, the papers about things to do I had brought with me, let alone the folders of printed out e-mails and committee papers which come down from Brussels in the canteen (the infamous tin trunks that travel between the two seats of Parliament) and the list of phone calls I ought to make.

URGENCY PROCEDURE

I walk into the EPP-ED (European Peoples Party-European Democrats, of which we are allied members), to find there is a new urgent matter I must plunge into without prior knowledge.  The Commission has requested Urgency procedure for a proposal to give millions of euro (I'm not clear whether 20 or 50 million) to Montenegro and the "services" of the Parliament (the staff in DG1 who allocate responsibility for documents to the appropriate committee), in their wisdom recommend that it should go to Foreign Affairs.  External trade normally deals with such matters, I am reminded, so I have

to go into bat to claim the Report for my committee.

AID TO MONTENEGRO

This prompts a bit of a discussion about both the need for and urgency of macro financial aid to Montenegro (which is in the Balkans, part of former Yugoslavia near Kosovo and Albania, by the way) as well as the respective claims of the different committees.  The principle of approving urgency is agreed and the somewhat unseemly discussion about who takes the lead peters out inconclusively.  Next I have to organise speaking time on the debate to follow the Oral Question our Committee put down for the Commission on the subject of the falsification of some records at Sellafield and the two NII (Nuclear Installations Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive - how is that for a mouthful?) reports on that incident and the general safety system management of BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.) at Sellafield.

HELPING THE IRISH

At the merest  mention of the place, our Irish colleague Mary Banotti pricks up her ears and leaps in to demand speaking time for herself to put across the Irish view on all this.  At first I think we only have the 4 minutes (what a luxury when 2 minutes is more usual), I have been allotted, so I offer a minute of my time for goodwill.  This is definitely in the category of turning the other cheek because the Irish blame everything they can think of on Sellafield, and some more.

KEEPING THE PEACE

Fortunately, and most unusually, there is more time unallocated, so we end up with Mary getting her

2 minutes, her colleague Avril Doyle another 2 minutes and then 2 minutes for my colleague Richard Inglewood who represents the North West Region and therefore Sellafield.  Finally I persuade a Spanish colleague, who is a scientist and knowledgeable in the nuclear field, to speak for 2 minutes and break up the Anglo-Irish hegemony on this issue.

FITTING EVERYTHING IN

There are other things to deal with, voting lists to discuss, preparation for meetings on the morrow and a number of colleagues to have a word with about the reports coming up for our committee (such as the Plooij-van Gorsel report on the Commission Communication about a European Research Area), or some piece of crucial gossip, so its rush rush until the session opens with more discussions about the Montenegro urgency request.

FAIR ALLOCATION

Then I have to head off for an early dinner with the vice-president of the EPP who chairs working group B which includes my Committee.  He is a splendid Finnish MEP called Ilka Suominen who used to be Speaker of their Parliament before coming to the European Parliament.  One or two EPP members of my committee (well, one Italian to be precise) have complained about the system of allocation of Reports by the Co-ordinator (that's me), discriminating in favour of the Germans, Spanish and Dutch to the disadvantage of the Italians as members from one of the big Member States deserving a fair share.

PLEASING EVERYONE

This serves to remind me that I can do better for my British colleagues

 Pleasing Everyone Cont'd

without too much risk of accusation of favouring my own national delegation members.  Most of the dinner was spent discussing more general , interesting politics once I have fielded the specific point.  Only one serious complaint in a year doesn't seem so bad to me, especially as I suspect I have no chance of pleasing the particular complainant concerned.

ENERGY INDUSTRY

Tuesday proves to be one of those days when you are on the go all the time.  The best bit was the first bit when I walked in with the sun shining and cool breeze.  After the session opened at 9, I had to head off to a meeting room for the annual general meeting of the European Energy Foundation to elect Board members (also described as vice-presidents) and discuss the programme of meetings for the year.  I have been a long standing V-P and board member of this body which acts as a forum for MEPs, representatives of the energy industry and the Commission, to come together to debate energy issues without having to adopt a position.  It complements the work of the Energy Committee.

MEPs BUDGET

Then I have a meeting with the accountants who deal with our British MEPs budget under my responsibility as Hon. Treasurer.  This is largely preparing me for the Bureau (of the British delegation of Conservative MEPs) meeting on Wednesday.  The Bureau (not quite as sinister as it could sound) is in effect the management committee running all the administrative, organisational and finance matters of the delegation.  It comprises the officers, those members elected by the delegation as a whole and key members of staff.

COMPROMISE SOLUTION

I am supposed to attend, at the same time, a meeting to thrash out a compromise motion for a resolution on the Sellafield Oral Question. 

This is a process evocative of Composite Motions at the Trades Union Congress annual conference.  Each political group manoeuvres to include its own best bits and exclude the others' worst bits.  Both MEPs and staff are involved.  I am not broken-hearted to miss out because I find it all a rather unsatisfactory process.  In the event the Greens extreme position pushes them to the margin and our team does quite well in getting the Socialists and Liberals to agree a common text.  If that isn't cosy I don't know what is, but that's the way things operate here.

DEFENDING CAR PRICES

We vote at noon.  Being Tuesday we manage to do it all within three quarters of an hour which enables me to reach the Kangaroo Group lunch in reasonable time.  I am due to take the Chair for a presentation by the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Peugeot-Citroen on the European Automobiles Industry in a global market.  The speaker, Jean-Martin Folz, spends most of the lunch on his feet giving his introductory remarks and answering questions.  He seems to me to give a robust defence of the industry including the issues of different pricing in the UK and on the continent as well as the block exemption clause which permits exclusive dealerships.  My main concern is to manage events so as to finish on time at 2.30 in order to move on to my next meeting.

EXCHANGE OF VIEWS

This meeting is an hour long slot with interpretation for all the EPP members of the Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy Committee.  This is a regular affair and is important because it is the only time in the month when colleagues have a chance to discuss committee specific issues with full interpretation.  For a change we actually have an exchange on the subject of radio spectrum auctions.

A PRICE TO PAY

A Dutch colleague Wim van Velzen, who is Rapporteur for the Telecoms Review, raises his concerns about the likely consequences of the heavy price  paid for the five licences auctioned in the UK for the third generation of mobile telephones, UMTS or universal mobile telephone system.  £22 billion was raised by the UK government and his fear is that this will be repeated all round Europe, that it is a tax by any other name and that the consumer will end up paying a heavy price.

MARKET FORCES PREVAIL

Some mentioned the 'beauty contest' method as an alternative method of allocating frequencies.  Some suggestions are made of infrastructure expenditure which should be undertaken as some form of balancing measure to recycle some of the money, such as paying the cost of all public bodies who have to invest in new equipment.  Someone points out that the genie is out of the bottle, so let market forces prevail.  Then the possibility is raised that some countries may create an unfair advantage for themselves by not auctioning, thereby encouraging a lower cost base and drawing in users from higher cost countries.  More likely, in my view, that the telecom companies might exploit this  situation to make more of a profit in such countries and balance it against lower profits on turnover within the auction countries.  My other thought is that consumers may find prices too high and the licensee companies might catch a cold, as they say.

ORGANISING THE WHIP

Anyway that, as well as talking

about reports due for attribution,

kept us busy for the hour.  Then its off I go to our delegation (national delegation of British Conservatives)  meeting, to sit in on a vigorous discussion about past and future voting patterns and how best to

organise the whip.

HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE

At 5 pm I meet a lobbyist for the Cereals Partnership.  We spent more time comparing notes on Air France than his main objective of achieving common standards of food supplements and labelling.  Poor fellow had had a real dose of classic shrugged shoulder brigade treatment.  Flight from London to Paris delayed so he missed his connection to Strasbourg (last flight of the day before) and ended up sharing a rented car with a young Frenchman who drove all the way from Paris to Strasbourg arriving in the early hours.  Like I normally say, the triumph of hope over experience.

VOTE REALISTICALLY

At 5.30 I'm off to a committee meeting to hear Commissioner Chris Patten talk about the problems with overseas technical assistance programmes in general and the Montenegro proposal in particular.  In essence the general issue is that the Commission can't deliver the full amount of spending voted by Parliament because they haven't the staff managerial resources.  Better to vote less money, he says, in line with what can be spent e.g. 40%

ARMS REDUCTION TREATIES

After that I attend a dinner debate about handling the weapons grade plutonium in Russia arising from the arms reduction treaties.  Finally at 10.55, I'm back in the chamber to take part in the debate following the reply by Commissioner Wallstrom to the oral question on Sellafield.  The debate is more balanced than it would have been in the last Parliament, with Mrs. Wallstrom in particular making a much more restrained and pragmatic reply than I had expected.  The Irish chorus of concern was aided by a Welsh lilt from the Plaid Cymru MEP, Jill Evans, and to an extent a Scottish contribution from the Lib Dem MEP for the South West.

PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION CEREMONY

Wednesday was almost as hectic up to the point when I left on the start of the journey to Taiwan to attend the inaugural ceremony of their newly elected President Chen, but that is another story.

Giles Chichester

48 Queen Street

EXETER EX4 3SR

Tel:- 01392 491815

Fax- 01392 491588