Yesterday (March 11th) at a meeting of the UK Conservative delegation in Straz, William Hague and Mark Francois, fresh from a meeting with EPP Group President Joseph Daul, announced that they had given formal notice to the EPP that Conservative MEPs would leave the EPP group at the end of this parliamentary term, in three months’ time. This should not be news at all, since David Cameron and William have repeatedly confirmed the intention, but none-the-less it was good to hear that the formal process was in place.
Labour have a Leader who (inter alia) promised an end to boom’n'bust, and a referendum on the European Constitution. He did not deliver. We have a leader who promised to take us out of the EPP, and despite delays, he is now delivering. I voted for Cameron in our Conservative leadership election mainly because of his commitment on the EPP, and I am delighted to see it fulfilled.
I had just tumbled off an overnight flight from New York via London, and hadn’t even had time to change, so I attended the meeting dishevelled, tie-less and unshaven, but I relished the occasion none-the-less.
This news on the EPP is surely of no interest — meaningless indeed — to the great majority of voters, who know nothing of the EPP and care even less. Yet to political anoraks and activists, and to Brussels insiders, it is momentous news. It is a touchstone issue. As I have been asked a hundred times: how can you pretend to be a eurosceptic Party when you sit with the Group that calls itself “the motor of European integration”? This is a story that has run for at least ten years — the whole of my parliamentary career. When I was first elected in 1999, the Party announced a new, arm’s length relationship with the EPP (“merely sharing an administrative umbrella”), and I thought in my naïveté that we had won the battle.
So you can imagine my rage and disappointment at our first delegation meeting in July 1999 when our then Leader Edward McMillan Scott announced (as near as I can remember): “Well that’s all sorted out then — back to business as usual”. That precipitated a row that ran on and off for years until Cameron lanced the boil.
Of course people are now asking “So who’s in your new group, then?”. The answer is that these are sensitive political issues for all the parties involved, and our new partners will want to time their own announcements to suit their own domestic political agendas. It would be quite improper for us to jump the gun. So watch this space. We will be forming a new, centre-right, non-federalist Party in the new parliament, and I look forward very much to joining it.
On August 7th, the roof fell in — literally — at the European parliament in Strasbourg. The vast space-age debating chamber, known as the “Hemicycle”, was commissioned in 1999, and seats 750 MEPs, plus staff and officials from the Commission and the European Council. The Strasbourg parliament was built as an expression of French pride, at a total cost of around $800 million. Yet up to 10% of its elaborate sculpted ceiling, spangled with electric lights, came tumbling down without warning, less than ten years after the building was opened.
Fortunately no-one was hurt, but if the accident had occurred while the building was in use, injuries and even fatalities would have been likely.
Despite desperate attempts, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to make repairs ahead of the parliament’s first Strasbourg session after the August holiday, scheduled for Sept 1st, it has proved impossible to complete the work on time, so the session has had to be transferred to Brussels. It is now hoped that the Hemicycle may be ready for the second September session, Sept 22/25. However amid rumours that asbestos has been discovered in the débris, the date for re-opening could be further delayed.
This move has highlighted the absurdity and waste of the parliament’s regular monthly commute between its two seats in Brussels to Strasbourg. The annual cost of this travelling circus, just for the commuting, is a quarter of a billion dollars, while the transportation involves 90,000 tons of unnecessary CO2 emissions. Many MEPs, including myself and Chris Heaton-Harris, have been campaigning for years to end this wasteful practice, and hope that the Strasbourg roof collapse will add impetus to their campaign.
If we can switch one session to Brussels, we can switch them all, and save the tax-payer a packet. This farcical commuting is a metaphor for the whole EU project. Like so many EU policies, it is impossible to justify, yet impossible to change. With luck, the roof falling in will prove to be a metaphor for the future of the EU.
Just at a time when the world’s food supply is shifting into shortage, when food prices are rocketing and agricultural commodity prices sky-high, when the costs of farming inputs like diesel are shooting up, and when policymakers are creating new demands for bio-fuels, up pops the EU Commission with a plan for a dramatic reduction in crop yields. Yes. You read that right. A reduction. The word “Perverse” might have been coined just for this initiative.
The Commission has given in to pressure from various alarmist green lobbies to introduce draconian bans on commonly-used pesticides and herbicides, many of which have been in use perfectly safely for decades. After all, say the bureaucrats, there may be no evidence of harm, but there could be potential problems that we don’t know about yet. This is the EU’s infamous Precautionary Principle. If something could be dangerous, assume it is, and ban it. On this basis we might well ban getting out of bed in the morning. Or crossing the road.
The European parliament, true to form, took some bad proposals from the Commission and made them worse. After all, you get cheap headlines by saying “MEPs vote to increase consumer protection”, if you don’t happen to mention the effect on food prices and availability. Too often, MEPs revel in the exercise of power without responsibility.
We don’t know of any harm caused by these substances, but we know an awful lot about the harm caused by banning them. The UK government’s prestigious Pesticide Safety Directorate (PSD) has published a damning report on the parliament’s proposals, saying they could reduce the availability of pesticides by up to 85%. PSD concludes that if the parliament’s proposals were implemented, “conventional agriculture in the UK (and much of the EC) … would not be achievable, with major impacts on crop yields and food quality”. There will certainly be double-digit percentage reductions in yields, with some estimates of losses up to 50%.
And the worst irony of all is that these measure would force production offshore, to jurisdictions with less rigorous rules and controls, and we should end up eating imported food with higher pesticide residues. So the consequences of the EU’s plan will be less food; more expensive food; plus slugs in the lettuce and worms in the apples. Or higher pesticide residues. Or both.
