Northampton
Commentary 3rd
May 2012
A
brief round-up of two Parliamentary sessions.
Strasbourg
Plenary session 17 – 20 April
A strange session. Strasbourg Plenary is
usually Monday to Thursday, this time it was Tuesday to Friday since Monday was
the Greek Orthodox Easter. The organisers evidently knew this would be not too
well attended for the agenda was very light on real EU business. There were
debates on Human Rights, Mali, Syria, Burma, the Black Sea, World Security
systems, Jordan, biometric passports, Women and Climate Change, biodiversity.
There was no business at all on Friday afternoon when there is on a normal
Thursday last day.
Employment
Committee 23rd – 24th April
Monday At least the Employment Commissioner, Lazlo Andor
turned up. You would think that portfolio holders would be frequent visitors to
their committees, but not so. This is only about the fourth time that Mr Andor
has turned up since acquiring the brief in 2009, while the committee meets once
a month. He came only to, “Exchange Views in the context of the Structured
Dialogue”. That was an hour and a half, then he was gone. This was followed by
the,”European Social Fund”, - more of your money, “Youth opportunities”, but
not removing the red tape that makes it so difficult for employers to take on
youngsters. Then more money on “Pre-accession assistance”, “Social Partnership
Funds” and “Social Investment Pact”.
Then the big one, “...Minimum training of
seafarers”, with contributions from MEPs of land-locked countries!
I hope you like the convoluted language of
the titles, but if I have to cope with it I thought you might like to
experience it.
Tuesday Finally, for me, “Exchange of views with the
Commission on Free Movement of Workers from Bulgaria and Romania”, without
Commissioner Andor. Transition arrangements which have been used to reduce the
inflow of workers from these countries will come to an end in Dec 2013. Following
which, quote from the official text, page 1, para 1.3,-
“...a
Member State must always give preference to Bulgarian and Romanian workers over
workers who are nationals of non-EU countries as regards first access to the
labour market”.
Thus do they now intend to discriminate
against people from the British Commonwealth who wish to come here.
Discrimination is against the Lisbon Treaty! But see the video of my
intervention in this debate, on my web site.
Also see my letter, on my website under
News, which was published in several local papers. Interestingly my own local
paper wanted proof of the quote before publishing, no doubt because they think
this is really hot stuff and so it is. You read/ heard it here first.
Derek Clark MEP
Northampton 2nd May 2012
