Feb 22nd 2010 - Brussels Commentary Employment Committee & Plenary

Brussels Commentary      Employment Committee & Plenary     22nd Feb 2010

Tuesday - Employment Committee

The directive for self employed truck drivers arose again. If adopted, their time on paper work at home would have to be part of their hours of work. You may recall that this was rejected by 24-25 votes in the vote last time, where my "No" vote made the difference. So I made another contribution this week,-

"We all know that drivers must conform to the limit of hours at the wheel, enforced by the tachograph. But self-employed drivers are spending their time at home on making out schedules for the next day or next week, or finding new clients, or completing paper work. How can that be monitored? Its like MEPs, how much time do we spend at home and I mean at home, not in an MEP office in the member state.

We all want people to be employed so we must encourage those drivers who wish to work for themselves as individuals. If this directive comes in then these individuals could be driven into the arms of the big corporations.

I am pleased to hear that the rapporteur wants to throw this directive out, we should return to the original position of the self employed being excluded from this directive". 

Horrors, I have supported the rapporteur,- because she rejects the directive so that independent truck drivers do not have to include associated tasks in their hours of work. Worse, I seem to have received support from the rapporteur for the Working Time Directive, Alejandro Cercas, who remarked,- "..as Mr Clark said...." Oh dear!

Wednesday - Plenary Session

You will all have seen reports of Nigel's attack on the new President of the European Council, Herman van Rumpoy. He was interrupted as he spoke and received much abuse. I support his speech, we are not welcome over here anyway. We at least know what democracy is, having been forging it for a thousand years. By contrast, Scandinavia apart, no European country can point to more than 200 years or so of democracy. In their attempts to catch up they refuse to adopt many democratic practices freely on offer from us. The EU laws are proposed by unelected commissioners and they do not have trial by jury. But freedom of expression at the lack of democracy is squashed, as I found out in Brussels when the police confiscated our 'bulldozer' and threatened me, and others, with arrest over it. 

As to insult, remember that the democratically elected President of the Czech Republic was described in the house as a trouble maker, because he had spoken his mind. They do not accept home truths, which brings me back to Rumpoy, who is he?

Thursday In votes today MEPs voted down mention of communist history, just think of the East European Countries in the EU.

In the Fisheries vote they agreed that the CFP was a failure, then proceeded to vote increased funding for it (517 - 92), including increased subsidies for its fishermen (503 - 90)! They did not support the amendment that "discards" should be ended as soon as possible but they voted 564 - 19 for the EU to police the fisheries of the world and to defend its external fisheries. The last two reflect the wretched business of awarding fishing licences for European fishing fleets to raid the waters of the third world.

Just look at these few extracts of the vote records and ask yourself if Nigel really was out of order.

Derek Clark MEP East Midlands                                          

Brussels 23rd Feb 2010