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Graham's blog 27th May
May 31, 2011 10:06 AM
Originally published by Sir Graham Watson MEP
Originally published by Sir Graham Watson MEP
Greetings
This time last year my teenage son was with me in Brussels for a half term holiday which was involuntarily extended by a week due to a cloud of volcanic ash closing down air traffic and causing awful disruption as more than 8000 flights were cancelled on the first day alone. So the news last Sunday morning of an even bigger cloud was as welcome in my household as a rat in a bedroom. But thanks to the EU we now have a European Aviation Crisis Communication Cell, set up after last year's experience, which sprang into action. Only 252 flights were cancelled on the first day and not many thereafter. Without the EU it would have taken years to agree on such a level of co-ordination, which allowed me to fly back from Brussels to discuss with members of the South Somerset Peace Group the extent of the threat posed by China. That I was late for my meetings in Parliament the following morning was due to Brussels' ground traffic rather than air traffic.
Brussels hosted this week not only meetings of the EU's foreign, defence, overseas aid and telecoms ministers but also the events of its annual 'green week' and a major jazz festival. Ministers signed off the final details of an agreement to set up a European Defence Agency; voted another €200 million in aid for South Sudan, due to become independent in six weeks' time but still plagued by fighting in Abyei, which is occupied by Northern Sudanese forces; and agreed to extend sanctions against Syria to ten more of its leaders, including President Assad, and to give a further €20 million in humanitarian aid to Libya.
Energy Commissioner Gunter Oettinger (Germany, EPP) - who I found most unimpressive when we were involved in a panel debate together last week - lost his battle on the stringency of stress tests for the EU's nuclear power installations. He wanted to include vulnerability to plane crashes and terrorist attacks but was outmanoeuvred by the member states' representatives in the EU Nuclear Safety Regulators Group.
I hosted in Brussels a conference of the Climate Parliament, which I chair, to which some 50 MPs from 20 countries, including India and Japan, came to discuss with industry experts and financiers how we finance the switch to green energy. Mercifully the Parliament's committee examining the EU's next 5 year budget plan had approved the previous day my amendments to devote 5% of the EU's budget to renewables, so I had what the bookies call 'form'. But the BBC's news website, reporting on a call from the committee for an overall 5% budget increase, showed a picture of MEPs voting in our Strasbourg chamber on a totally different issue which included me - guilt by association!
'Green Week' included a joint conference of MPs and MEPs on Tuesday, which discussed energy safety; a conference hosted by three think tanks on Wednesday, which I chaired, to discuss energy generation options, and an assessment on Thursday of the LIFE programme for funding environmental projects hosted by my colleague Chris Davies. That the Climate Parliament met on Thursday and Friday was totally coincidental, since our reach is global rather than simply EU-wide.
The EP's transport committee adopted a report permitting body scanners, since new technology has satisfied our concerns on protecting travellers' modesty. MEPs welcomed the announcement that the first two of eighteen operational satellites in the EU's Galileo GPS system will be launched in October. And news of the arrest of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic in Serbia capped a busy but productive week.
I will take a break next week so will write again from Strasbourg on 10 June.
Regards
Graham
Graham Watson
Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament
South West England and Gibraltar
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