Sept 20th-23rd 2010 - Strasbourg Commentary Plenary Session

20 September 2010

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Strasbourg Commentary Plenary Session 20th - 23rd Sept 2010 Useless UK Tories.

If anyone thought that Cameron's baby, the ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists), was set up to get the Tory MEPs out of the highly federalist EPP group and demonstrate their Euro-scepticism, think again. In a speech praising Von Rumpoy, Michal Kaminski, elected by the ECR as their leader, was more enthusiastically pro-EU, pro-Federalist than any EPP leader. Meanwhile, this appeared on the "Open Europe" website,- Iain Martin: The Strange death of Cameron's Euroscepticism "Writing in the WSJ, Iain Martin looks at the Conservatives' attitude to Europe. He argues, "Almost unnoticed, [Cameron's] MPs have voted for a list of measures that would a few years ago have triggered full-scale Tory war.

There was the expansion of justice and home-affairs powers, involving the extension of the so-called European arrest warrant. The European External Action Service--or EU diplomatic service--was nodded through. New regulations for the City of London require the establishment of three pan-European supervisory bodies. This was accepted by the Treasury and if there were protests from the Conservative benches they didn't make much noise." Wednesday morning Tory MEP Timothy Kirkhope, ECR leader briefly, spoke in the debate on the Financial Supervision Package.

This was a sycophantic, Dave supportive, speech in which he congratulated Von Rumpoy on the progress made towards European Economic Government! And this is the group of which Roger Helmer and Dan Hannan are members. Godfrey Bloom was our speaker on the Financial Supervision Package and I will not attempt to report his speech, you can catch it on the party web or on U-tube. Then more hypocrisy. Guy Verhofstatd is the Lib-Dem leader and recently spoke out against the French expulsion of the Roma, so see the quote below from another MEP, Derk Jan Eppink:- "As Belgian PM, Guy Verhofstadt deported a group of Roma in October 1999. The Roma were lured to the Gent police station and collectively transported to Slovakia. In 2002, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Belgium for violating "key provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights" because 74 Roma were "collectively expelled". (Case: Conka versus Belgium) This morning, I reminded Mr. Verhofstadt to the deportation of Roma by his coalition government of liberals, socialists and greens.

Unfortunately, he walked out of the debate and refused to reply, as the You Tube demonstrates". The screw is tightening, as I remarked in an earlier commentary. There have always been buzz words and phrases, "More Europe", Post Democratic Society" and so on. Now we have the "Community Method". It has been heard before, infrequently, but now, after Lisbon its use has increased dramatically, with many speakers plugging it this week. This one is here to stay because it means that they do not trust national governments to push the "project" forward. In fact, the Council of Ministers, all nationally elected MPs, gets in the way with its potential to veto proposals, democracy's last defence.

This sinister term means that, more and more, decisions will be taken at Commission level and at President of the European Council level, Von Rumpoy, to whom Baroness Ashton will report, for the External Action Service. The European Parliament will not be sidelined, it's too good a rubber stamp, its ever increasing role. Thursday. You will find a speech of mine on the web site, requested of me Weds afternoon following an alteration to the agenda due to the French transport strike. Many MEPs had left on Weds and today's voting was cancelled.

This also persuaded today's president to allow speakers to overrun their allocated time, treats! So I hastily increased my one minute by another 20 seconds!

Derek Clark MEP Strasbourg 23rd Sept 2010