Please find below the latest newsletter from Graham Watson, our Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar:

Greetings,

Readers curious about the secret I could not let you in to in last week’s newsletter may have noticed that the news (embargoed for Saturday) leaked out last Friday night. Tory MEP Edward McMillan-Scott, former leader of the UK Tory MEPs and now a Vice President (deputy speaker) of the EP, joined us last week. He is the third Tory MEP I have persuaded to join the Liberal Democrats in my fifteen years as a MEP. (The first was James Moorhouse and the second Bill Newton-Dunn.) It’s not hard to coax them over, though deep reserves of patience help: their former party’s position on Europe is now so permeated by prejudice that no self-respecting pro-European can stay there.

I spent Sunday and Monday in Delhi, having welcomed Edward to our ranks at the party conference in Birmingham on Saturday. As Chairman of the EP’s delegation for relations with India I felt I’d better brief myself in advance of taking an official delegation there at the end of April. A forty-hour whirlwind of meetings with government ministers, MPs, think tanks and others alleviated my ignorance somewhat. But my learning curve will be steep, if not vertical. I’ve visited the country only once before, and then for fewer than 24 hours.

Back in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday I turned my attention to Moldova. I’ve been appointed Parliament’s ‘rapporteur’ for the EU’s relations with the country for the duration of this parliament and had to engage in debate with Commission officials at a meeting of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee. The country’s governing coalition consists of three Liberal parties which would all like the country to join the EU. Yet average per capita income is just one-third of the average PCI in Albania, which may give you an idea of how poor it is; and the territory of Transdnistria, disputed with Russia, presents a major security challenge. I meet their Prime Minister Vlad Filat next week for further talks.

Parliament has been bedecked with posters over the past fortnight promoting a campaign to stop violence against women. At a conference on Tuesday to mark international women’s day, under the slogan ‘We can stop it’, national MPs joined us to discuss how best to tackle domestic violence. Rather more attention was paid however to a move in Parliament’s women’s rights committee on Monday to demand an impact assessment before voting on a proposal to extend statutory maternity leave to 20 weeks. This means the vote will be postponed by eight weeks.

Our environment ministers met in Brussels on Monday for their first exchange of views since Copenhagen on how to proceed in the fight against climate change. They discussed with Mexico’s minister the preparations for the next UN climate change summit, to take place in Cancun in December. On Tuesday it was the turn of our finance ministers, who discussed how to phase out the emergency public stimulus measures put in place at the height of 2008’s banking and economic crisis. At that meeting the Spanish government, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency (ie provides their minister to chair the meetings of sectoral ministers), unexpectedly took off the agenda the draft EU directive on the regulation of hedge funds. Why? Because our prime minister picked up the phone to theirs and told him this is too sensitive an issue in the UK’s general election campaign.

I spent yesterday in Berlin, where I’d been invited to speak at a rally to mark the anniversary of the Liberal uprising of 18 March 1848 against authoritarian rule. I also used the occasion to visit MPs from our sister party the FDP, now back in government after an absence of 11 years. Today I speak at Bath University (lunchtime) and then at Wells Cathedral school (evening). Over the weekend I put the finishing touches to a book I have written about the contribution of Liberals to the building of the EU over the past thirty years.

Regards,
Graham