Report on ELDR Council/Congress - Bucharest, October 2006

There was very little worthy of reporting from Council, so most of this report is devoted to Congress.

Council

The main political debate for Council was to be on the paper mapping out our vision for the future of the EU, which included sections on the Constitution and the CAP and an Environmental section added by the UK delegation as a lengthy amendment. The Lib Dem International Relations Committee had worked hard through the summer improving this document, the first draft of which was weak. The Lib Dem delegation wanted the paper to go to a drafting committee to allow the various delegations to negotiate an improved text. The President disagreed, but was overruled by Council when we came to vote on the amendments, so there was then no option but to refer the document back to the Bureau. A new draft taking into account the numerous amendments will now appear again at the next Council meeting and it will go to a drafting committee.

Charles Kennedy (as a member of our delegation) made one of the best speeches from the floor during the political debate.

Sharon Bowles was re-elected to the Bureau as a vice president.

Congress

The opening session included speeches from Mr Radiceanu (PM of Romania) largely devoted to his party's record of reform in government, followed by one of his ministers who addressed Romania's future in the EU. Pat Cox gave an excellent speech on multilateralism in inernational relations that I later had the opportunity to discuss with him at length over a drink.

Debates

Upholding Europe's legacy of Freedom and Openness. Speakers included Kishwer Falkner, Alexander Alvaro (FDP) Meglena Kuneva (MNSS, Bulgaria) and Lousewies van der Laan (leader of D66). Much of this debate centred around the issue of upholding freedoms in the face of threats to security and also on the importance of tolerance in multicultural societies.

Keynote speakers. Gijs de Vries, EU counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Graham Watson and Mihai Ungureanu, (PNL, Romanian Foreign Minister). Dealing with terrorism in a liberal democracy was the main theme, but Graham Watson also touched on the problems likely to be encountered by new entrant states and humorously cautioned against over-regulation.

Making Europeans work together for a safer world. This debate was centred on the two Theme Resolutions to be considered later. Speakers were Cecilia Malmstrom (Sweden), Matyas Eorsi (Hungary) and William Wallace.

Resolutions and Votes

It became clear that we had only 30 delegates present and would therefore be able to activate only 60 of our 77 votes. Each delegate is only allowed one proxy on behalf of their national delegation. This turned out to be crucial in a number of close votes that we lost during the voting sessions. Our delegation included Simon Hughes MP, (Lord) William Wallace and Andrew Duff MEP and Sharon Bowles MEP. Robert Woodthorpe Browne had been agreed as delegation leader in advance.

Drafting Committees

Drafting Committees allow the national delegations to negotiate the text of amendments and can include extensive rewordings. They are very useful in helping the various parties to come up with a text that everyone can live with. Only issues on which there is no consensus go forward for debate in plenary. There are two drafting committees, one for the Theme Resolutions, another for everything else. Last year I took on the Theme resolution and Robert Woodthorpe Browne took on the others. This year we reversed. We were both supported by a couple of other Council delegates. Colin Ross and Jo Hayes ably assisted me.

This year we booked a room for the delegation to discuss voting intentions and to agree on who was to speak for the delegation in each debate. Robert and I have had a number of discussions on improving the cohesiveness of the delegation and we are beginning to see a real improvement in the way we function as a team.

Plenary Votes

Generally, the plenary votes did not go well for us.

The Internal Security Theme Resolution was uncontroversial and we achieved the changes we wanted.

External Security. We could not support the proposal that a single European seat replace UK and French UN Security Council seats. We were never going to win that vote, but we believed the proposal to be premature and voted for the removal of the relevant text. We also opposed an amendment that called for a single European Army. This was approved by a majority of 5. We would have won this vote had we had our full voting strength. It also outlined the need for more bilateral working with our sister parties. In our post congress get-together we resolved to address this issue. Having lost the vote on both of our two sticking points, we were left with no option but to vote against the resolution as a whole.

Energy Policy Russia

We voted against this resolution as it assumed that nation states trade energy rather that private sector companies. Despite this, it was passed by a small margin, again reflecting our inability to cast all of our votes.

Common Energy Policy

Peter Price spoke for us on the nuclear debate, essentially calling for all reference to nuclear to be expunged. We agreed to remove our anti-nuclear text in the Environmental Resolution if removal of pro-nuclear text was agreed. He pointed out that pro and anti nuclear parties would not change their view as a result of a vote, that voting on the issue would be divisive whatever the outcome and that we should respect each individual party's right to take a different view. Unfortunately we lost the second of two votes required to achieve this, as the Italians switched their votes to support their own amendment. Peter's efforts were heroic and we were very close to achieving an unexpected victory. We would have won this vote had we been able to cast all of our votes. We symbolically voted against the motion having lost this vote. We did try to persuade LYMEC to agree to a deal on our respective amendments to avoid a single ELDR policy on nuclear power, but LYMEC specifically wanted a vote on the issue.

Environmental Policy

The text opposing nuclear power was deleted. Our call for legislation requiring manufacturers to reduce GHG emissions of products and construction companies to incorporate energy saving features into buildings was deleted by a LYMEC amendment on the basis of cost to the firms concerned. We were not too concerned at the removal of the nuclear references (although we voted against), but the second deletion weakened the paper. However, we should look on the clear vote in favour of the motion as a whole as significant progress in developing ELDR environmental policy, which has previously been threadbare. Thanks to Jo Hayes for drafting this motion.

Trafficking of Human Beings

The only significant vote was on the LYMEC amendment calling for decriminalisation of all aspects of sex work involving consenting adults. I was called to speak for our group on this issue. Although we agreed with LYMEC from a policy angle, there are many nations who find this too difficult to accept on cultural grounds. We opposed the amendment on subsidiarity grounds and won the vote overwhelmingly.

Abolition of Visas in Europe

Simon spoke against this LYMEC resolution as a whole. We won this vote comfortably, but not overwhelmingly.

Ageing in Europe

David Bellotti spoke for our delegation against the LYMEC amendment, which took a considerably more negative line than the original. This amendment would not have been accepted at a Lib Dem conference, as it was tantamount to a vote against. It rewrote the entire resolution. The original was a collection of musings on ageing without any specific action points. Our view was that it was an issue that could benefit from a policy resolution and David was primed to speak again to propose our Reference Back. However D66 proposed a Reference Back when they were called. The vote in favour was overwhelming. I have agreed to work on a reworked resolution with Keskusta (the proposers) and D66.

Urgency Resolution on Kosovo

This was passed unanimously. I had ensured during the drafting committee that the conditions on recognising Kosovo that had been attached to the previous resolutions on the issue were added, as the original text could have been interpreted as supporting unconditional recognition.

Lessons to learn.. We need to make use of all of our votes. Unfortunately Congress delegates do not get expenses. However, it is likely that there are party members who would be willing to take some of their holiday to include ELDR Congress in some years and turn out to cast a vote on behalf of their party. Also it is clear that LDYS needs to take a more active role in LYMEC to convince them that environmental policies are compatible with liberal thinking. The current LYMEC delegates take social and economic liberalism to a level of purity that leads to the generation of bad policy.

Phil Bennion