Latest posts
Fighting unscrupulous employers and other issues this week
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The European Commission published annual reports on Monday on progress in gender equality and on the impact of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. Both can be found on the excellent europa website, www.europa.eu, as can the Commission’...
Controversy over EU airline emissions law and other weekly issues
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Aviation matters were prominent among our concerns this week. The EU’s imposition on 1 January of an emissions fee on airlines flying into and out of European airspace is still under attack elsewhere; the USA lost an appeal to the European C...
Joblessness in the EU still on the rise
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Parliament has been officially in recess this week and does not start back until next Tuesday. But I was in Gibraltar on Monday, where the new Socialist-Liberal coalition invited me to address a meeting of their cabinet and I paid a courtesy call...
Busy week in Europe …
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There is so much to report this week it is hard to know where to start. On Monday, while I was visiting Riga to address a conference on the sovereign debt crisis, the Presidents of the EU Council and the European Commission were in Seoul for the nucl...
Controversy-filled week in Brussels
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In the absence of a new world trade agreement, which seems continuously to elude our negotiators at the WTO, attention in Brussels is focussing on bilateral trade agreements which would stimulate trade and therefore growth and jobs. The 27 trade mini...
Pot calling the cattle black and other issues …
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I flew to Strasbourg on Monday for a busy parliamentary week under glorious springtime sunshine. We voted inter alia to support Commissioner Reding’s proposal to legislate for quotas for women on company boards (targets 30% by 2015 and 40%...
Russian Presidential elections and debating Liberalism in Africa
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The week kicked off with cross-party condemnation of the rigged Presidential election in Russia. Parliament’s Liberal Group hosted a conference at which Pawel Khodorkovsky, son of jailed tycoon Mikhail, came to speak. Our Group leader Guy Ve...
Greece and ACTA again in the spotlight
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On Tuesday I was in Warsaw in my capacity as leader of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party to meet Janusz Palikot, the Leader of a new radical liberal movement which took 10% of the vote in last autumn’s elections. These last three d...
Strasbourg week and my favourite new acronym
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The European Parliament met in Strasbourg this week. In a vote on next year’s budget we called for a single seat for the European Parliament, to cut operating costs. Our vote will not make a crucial difference but is yet another sign that we ar...
The Green paper, EU-China stand off and Greece
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On Monday the governments of France and Germany held a joint cabinet meeting. This was not the first such occasion, but to give an idea of the extent to which they are committed to closer union, they discussed a plan to harmonise company taxation by...
European council to set up the European Stability Mechanism and the echoes of Davos 2012
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Monday this week saw the heads of state and government of the EU member states meeting in Brussels at an ‘informal’ European Council meeting. They agreed one treaty setting up the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a ‘bailout fund&...
Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement shortly to come before the EU Parliament
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Tuesday I met Steve Bradley, Chair of the Green Liberal Democrats from the UK (an associate body of the party). We spoke about the plans of the EU’s current Danish presidency to advance investment on renewables before I went into committee to p...
Busy week in Strasbourg and the election of the new EP President
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The European Parliament met in Strasbourg this week for the traditional mid-term session in which we spend an inordinate amount of time electing a new speaker (’President’ in our parlance), deputy speakers (’Vice Presidents’)...
Tampering with democracy in Hungary
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As Parliament and the other EU institutions returned to work this week I co-hosted with Nick Clegg a meeting for senior EU LibDems (three prime ministers, five deputy prime ministers, one or two other ministers and five EU Commissioners) with UK gove...
Before the Christmas break …
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Parliamentary business wound up this week with committee meetings to clear outstanding matters before the Christmas break. The foreign affairs committee voted to approve two reports, one of which was my report to prevent the leaders of authoritarian...
Echoes of the European Council Summit
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Of the three speeches I made in the House this week the two important ones – on the outcome of last week’s European Council (Summit) and on the future of the Intelligent Energy Europe programme – went largely unreported in the UK, while my...
The UK has lost the most …
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This is a week in which so much has happened here I can hardly do justice to it in a newsletter which endeavours not to exceed one side of a piece of A4 paper. The preparations for the EU summit, the jockeying for position of the major players, the c...
A Word of Thank You!
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Thank you to all my readers who wished me good luck last weekend. I was elected last Friday as the new leader (’President’ in continental parlance) of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR). Since I had constituency duties...
Adhere to the letter and spirit of the treaties
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ELDR unites nearly 60 political parties from across Europe. The ELDR is the European political party that promotes the liberal values of freedom and individual responsibility, democracy and the rule of law, respect for human rights and tolerance, a m...
