The euro-zone and world financial crisis

At a lunch last week with the governor of the European Central Bank, Mr Trichet described it as "the world's worst crisis since World War Two."

The annual State of the Union debate was held in the parliament on Wednesday this week. Barroso, president of the Commission, promised vigorous action. His full speech can be downloaded here.

The best individual speech, in my view, was by the Liberal leader, Guy Verhofstadt (previously prime minister of Belgium for nine years, which is some achievement). He said " "It is not out of any desire for power for its own sake that the European Commission should be given additional competences but out of necessity for the interests of a wide and diverse Union to be upheld by a body acting as the guardian of the collective interest - a role reserved for the Commission under the Treaties since the beginning....Concretely, Barroso committed the Commission to shortly present proposals for common eurobonds, for the common external representation of the euro and for a framework for economic governance beyond the 6-pack. They are urgently needed and we eagerly await the formal tabling of these measures very shortly in the coming weeks, as well as proposals on recapitalising Europe's banks and appointing a senior member of the Commission to act as Europe's finance minister."

In essence, both said that the process of uniting Europe, started in 1950 following Winston Churchill's speeches calling for a United States of Europe, has reached its next stage, monetary union. The solution to the euro-zone crisis now depends on national governments taking that step. The governments will have to stop trying to be ananimous together because that means moving at the pace of the most reluctant. Governments must reach decisions dynamically together, by acting on a majority among them.

Download an explanation of the six legislative measures (the "six pack") being put in place by the European Parliament and the national governments. MEPs approved them yesterday. The Bundestag in Berlin votes on them today.

A Palestinian state?

The 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly is now underway. The debate over a unilateral declaration of a new Palestinian state is at the fore. The Palestinians have not made their official request public, reports indicate that they are trying to build majority support in the UN Security Council for full state recognition - thus forcing theUS to use its veto and so dividing Europe(4 EU members currently sit in the Security Council). With Lebanon holding the Presidency of the UNSC, a vote could occur within 24 hours of the official request which is expected on Friday when President Abbas addresses the General Assembly. If that happens, and given the potential resulting outfall, the need to put pressure on both sides to resume negotiations will never have been more urgent.

Earth Overshoot Day

This week, on 27th September, the world reached Overshoot Day for 2011. It measures Human demand on nature - from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food - against nature's capacity to regenerate those resources and absorb the waste. In approximately nine months, we humans have demanded a level of services from nature equivalent to what the planet can provide for all of 2012. We maintain this deficit by depleting stocks of things like fish and trees, and by accumulating waste such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ocean. See http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/

What do I do personally?

One constituent has - very kindly - asked what I do personally. Nobody achieves anything on their own in politics : it is all team-work through building majorities. Every day is different. But I deal with 3-400 emails each day on all kinds of subjects. I have two assistants in my office plus an intern. In the parliament I serve on two committees - on Development, and on the Environment, and attend Liberal MEP group meetings where we thrash out our positions and policy together. There are visitors every day - who are lobbyists or sometimes constituents. There are votes in the chamber. And I was elected to be one of the five Quaestors, who take the political decisions about how the parliament is run, to approve or change the decisions proposed by the departmental "Sir Humphreys".

There is a link to each MEP on the parliament's website which lists their work. Mine is http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/public/geoSearch/view.do?country=GB&partNumber=1&zone=East+Midlands&language=EN&id=1394

And there is http://www.votewatch.eu/ , founded by the LSE in London, which follows the voting of each and every MEP.

That is in the parliament. Then there is the East Midlands to be back in every week....

Finally

Did you read the Lex column at the back of the Financial Times last Saturday ?

It noted that Einstein said in his Theory of Relativity, that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. If it did, said Einstein, it meant that Time has reversed and is now going backwards. The FT commented that this might be very good news - because as we go back to the good old days the present world financial crisis would start to disappear.

It reminded me what singer Dolly Parton said : "I play all my old blues records backwards - because you give up smoking, your dog comes back to life, and your lover returns."

See you at our Regional Conference in Skegness on Saturday 15th October.

All the best

Bill