16 February 2006

Feb 16th 2006 Strasbourg Commentary Continued

Strasbourg Commentary Continued Feb 16th 2006 The voting on the Services Directive started at 10 am and took 2 hours. The first amendment to reject the whole thing was lost by 153 to 486 votes. After some 220 votes, covering many more amendments than that due to compromises where several are lumped together, the directive was approved by 391 to 213. Late last night we realised that our hopes of its defeat on the first vote would come to nothing, because the two biggest groups, PPE-DE & PSE, had reached an agreement; they did a deal. No smoke and mirrors now of course, just mirrors. In the event, however, the deal fell apart leading to very lively altercation when the rapporteur, Mrs Gebhardt, PSE, rose to accuse the PPE of going back on their word. "No", said a PPE spokesman, they had simply decided to grant their group a free vote! Daniel Cohn-Bendit suggested a recess to sort it out, denied. Then Mrs Frassoni complained that two words had been deleted from the text of an amendment, completely altering its intent, and demanding that the phrase be reinstated. Mrs Frassoni was right but that's not good enough for a lot of MEPs; much disturbance. Nigel Farage therefore rose on a point of order, quoting Rule 170 which allows for a political group to move that the vote be adjourned. Nigel justifying this by saying that the whole thing had become a farce, uproar. At least that vote was taken, the President ruling, amid more uproar, that Mr Farage, like any member, had the right to call a point of order. That comment has been noted, as was the president's earlier comment that he would conduct proceedings scrupulously according to the rules. That vote was lost and we ploughed on. The directive still succeeded in spite of the falling out because both PSE and PPE-DE are dedicated to the EU project and naturally vote for anything which pushes it on. You might like to know that I looked round as we voted, and it seemed that we agreed with the Tories when it was a big majority (450+) one way or the other, but on closer votes we voted with the communists! As to the significance of the whole thing, that remains to be seen. The many amendments muddy the waters; we are already starting to work it out. Derek Clark MEP Strasbourg Feb 16th 2006

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13 February 2006

Feb 13th - 16th 2006 Strasbourg Commentary Plenary Session

Commentary Strasbourg Plenary Session Feb 13th - 16th UKIP members in the East Mids may have picked up letters or other news purporting to show that the two East Mids Tory MEPs are alone in rescuing the UK from pernicious EU intrusions. Last week there appeared a letter in one of our papers describing how East Mids Conservatives had saved the pint. In fact, as I pointed out earlier, UKIP was as much part of voting for that amendment as anyone else. It does not stop there, letters from these two in my own local paper, Northampton "Chronicle & Echo" , have increased in frequency to a marked degree over the last year. They have become personal on occasion. Recently Heaton-Harris accused me of behaving like Kilroy and only doing it for the money. In this letter he also spun an earlier letter of mine accusing me of claiming that I had said he had never attended the Employment Committee, on which I sit and he doesn't! Don't worry, my rebuttal of that is in tonight's "Chron". All of which demonstrates that the Tories are getting more and more worried about us. Possibly this relates to William Hague's visit to Brussels at the end of January when he tried to put a new political group together to satisfy "Dave's" declaration that the Tories would leave the EPP-DE. A deathly silence has ensued. They will now probably try to throw mud at us over the vote on the CFP yesterday. This was on Catherine Stihler's (late of losing Labour the Dunfermline seat) report restricting access to the Shetland Box and the Plaice Box. This was a recorded vote so we are seen to be voting against, when it passed by 550 - 56 votes. Look out for Tory condemnation, and, "we saved the box for UK fishermen, UKIP wanted to give it away". A tricky vote for us, but we voted no because we don't believe in the CAP imposing fishing rules in our waters. You should also know that this measure grants UK fishermen access to these two boxes, but to catch only 40% of fish in what are our own waters. Heaton-Harris and the Tories voted yes, (Helmer absent) happy to accept scraps from the EU table. Do you remember a Roger Helmer letter a few months back about the Optical Radiation directive which sought to include protection against natural radiation (sunlight) as an employer responsibility? His moan then was that UKIP, especially me, had voted against excluding this from the directive so that the vote, although in favour, failed because needed a Qualified Majority, and our votes made the difference. I did not dispute that, Helmer has more experience. Well, the directive came up for voting today on second reading and passed by 570-16 with the note,-"The Council has accepted Parliament's key demand that the legislation should cover only artificial sources... and not natural sources such as the sun"! But I knew that some time ago because I was present at Conciliation, when the Commission announced their acceptance that sunlight should be excluded. Roger Helmer, was wrong, the original vote never was QMV! Tomorrow sees the vote on the Services Directive. With over 400 amendments condensed into 300 votes it includes over 130 Recorded votes, which take longer than a show of hands. Another marathon session, except the first vote is an amendment to reject and this morning the PSE leader was all against the directive. We shall see, but we will be supporting the Unions, who are against it, even though their demonstration yesterday kept us all locked in for two hours while the riot police sorted them out. Derek Clark MEP Strasbourg Feb 15th 2006

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