Last plenary before Christmas but little time for slowing down: heres your weekly update! Strasbourg is a beautiful city & its Christmas Market is considered one of the best in Europe - so Ben & I thought we would spend the weekend exploring it! It was refreshing to visit the place as a tourist before heading into the European Parliament on Monday... a beautiful city doesnt justify the cost of us having 2 seats. I hope we will see this rectified in the near future - so Im campaigning for a Single Seat. Once into the week - there were strategic discussions in the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament & in working groups... preparing for 2015. On Tuesday, there was much focus on tax avoidance and evasion - on which @EuroLabour are leading. I spoke in the debate on the finalisation of trade talks with Ecuador (see here: europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/plenary/search-by-speaker/results?speakerId=124953) - it was the first late debate Ive spoken in & its not a great experience! After a short night, I was up early on Wednesday for a breakfast briefing with Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič on the EU energy policy. I asked him how the Commission were joining up energy & industrial policies, & how the general public & social partners will be involved in plans set to be unveiled in January. Weve got a follow-up chat about it. What do you think? By far the key event of the day was the EPs vote to recognise the Palestinian State - by a large majority. All efforts have to be made to keep the peace process alive and to deliver a just peace agreement... the EU must move from payer to player! We awarded the EPs annual film prize - the LuxPrize to Ida (a Polish film)... well worth a watch. The day ended with the EuroLabour Xmas Party - much singing and even some dancing :-) Yesterday I was up and out to talk about Europe-Latin American relations in my capacity as member of the Euro-Lat parliamentary delegation. Im hoping that we will have a joint discussion about CSR and social rights in each continent. Will be very interesting... Im meeting the NECC to get their views in February. After the final votes of 2014, it was time to wish everyone a happy Christmas and a great New Year & head off for a couple of weeks welcome rest and merriment. Today, Ive got the nice job of giving Christmas presents to our hardworking team... they are a great group of talented individuals working hard for the North East! Tomorrow Christmas starts in the K-D house - cant wait! :-) I hope you are all well - happy holidays!
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 08:27:36 +0000
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