Solvency 2 and booze cruisers rights

9.00 to 12.30 in ECON committee. Jean Claude Junker is there to talk about the Eurozone. After that, I go straight to lunch (and to make a speech) to the Quoted Companies Alliance. I tell them about all the portfolios I am leading on and the upcoming ones where I expect to play a part. They are particularly interested in the moving of company HQ, also reported in the FT today, following the McCreevy speeches yesterday, and the common consolidated corporate tax base.

Back to the office at 14.30 for a meeting to discuss legal situation on the future of IP and agree to set up a dinner in the first week of December with IP specialists when there is also a big conference in Brussels. I have in mind to invite Jacques Borgeois as an expert on the institutional competences. I follow this with general paperwork and end of year office budget matters.

16.15 Another meeting on Solvency 2, this time with the Royal Bank of Scotland. I obtain more useful background but there is a limit to how many more of these meetings are worthwhile before we have the Commission’s draft, not due until July. Still, this is useful for now as it is turning into a bit of a Solvency 2 week.

A flurry of late activity overtakes us as tomorrow the ECJ decision is out on excise duty and personally purchased and imported goods transported by a third party carrier. I take all the documents back to the flat at 9pm for a good read. All very interesting and I agree with the legal logic of the Advocate General. But the ECJ does not work by black and white UK style legal interpretation, so we shall see.