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Andrew

The European Parliament has had a good year. It seems necessary to say so, for two reasons. First, the Parliament gets few fair reports in the British media. Second, as the future of the enlarged European Union is now being forged in constitutional terms, it actually matters who’s up and who’s down in the Brussels stakes.

The Parliament finished its December session with two successes. The annual EU budget was approved without fuss. MEPs voted to contain expenditure to 0.98 per cent of GDP, which is € 8 billion below the previously agreed maximum ceiling. As the EU budget is very small relative to national budgets — some 2 per cent only of all tax revenue - the impact of our spending decisions should not be exaggerated. But we hold the key to farming and make a big difference in other important areas, such as transport, the environment, overseas aid, R & D, regional development and, increasingly, foreign and security policy. Alongside the decision on the budget is the continuing success of European Parliamentary initiatives to tighten up controls on spending and to stamp out financial abuses inside the member states.

Our second prize before Christmas was to at last agree a Statute for the terms and conditions of employment of Euro MPs. This was highly controversial, not least because agreement on a single salary figure to replace very different national salaries had to satisfy both the poorest and richest MEPs. (Italian MEPs currently earn about three times as much as Portuguese.) The Statute also replaces an expenses system based on a flat fee for distance travelled with reimbursement of the actual cost involved. For UK MEPs the agreed changes will not make much material difference but they will help us politically in an election year.

All is not happy with the Union, of course. The European Council of heads of government botched their attempt to agree the draft Constitution on which I, particularly, have been working for almost five years. But the Parliament has come well out of the negotiating process and will profit further from its eventual successful outcome. Increasingly sophisticated, powerful and mature, the European Parliament is the body to watch out for in 2004.

Andrew Duff is the Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament for the East of England. www.andrewduffmep.org.

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Andrew's work
in the European Parliament since 1999

Andrew is Vice-President of the European Parliament delegation to the Constitutional Convention on the Future of Europe.

Rights for EU citizens

Andrew drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights which has strengthened the rights of all the citizens of the European Union.

Turkey

Andrew is working for improved links between the EU and Turkey, to encourage improvements in Turkey's human rights record and to enhance its democracy.

Andrew's campaigning in the East of England

Airport Expansion

Andrew has led calls for the Air Travel industry to be subjected to the same rigorous environmental criteria as other modes of transport