Welcome Bulgaria and Romania

5.45 Off to Luton for the 7.20 flight. No queues at the airport and I get sent to the new body scanner, which seems to take much longer as the operators have to peer at the screen rather than just listen for whether it beeps. Arrive in Basle 10.15, still 9.15 UK time. I have to wait half an hour for others on a later flight then four of us squash into a car that was sent to collect two of us (second car nowhere in sight but did turn up later) so I have chronic back ache by the time we get to Strasbourg at 12.00. Last January it looked like a Christmas card with frosted trees, blue sky and snow, today it is dingy and grey. I unpack trunk, check emails. Carol arrives at 13.30. I go to the store to buy a stock of fruit then first business of the day is Group.

16.00 Group Meeting. We have Bonde, another of the Presidential candidates to speak to us. He is from the Eurosceptic wing, but says he would rather there had been a liberal, reforming candidate he could have backed! His platform is that the EPP/PSE stitch up is wrong. Most of the questions put to him are about how we agree on Parliamentary reform but have problems with his group’s sceptical identity and why is he bothering to try and change something he does not believe in. After he goes we deal with how the ballots will be conducted tomorrow. That takes up most of tomorrow, just in case there have to be several rounds.

17.30 I chair the LDEPP meeting. There is discussion on the outcome of the ‘package’ of positions. We will get a Vice President of the Employment committee for Liz and may also end up with one on Fisheries that Elspeth will do. We can not get anything on civil liberties. We discuss how to treat the new group in the Parliament. Chris says he does not see how we can treat them in a ‘discriminatory’ way by refusing to deal with them (which is proposed in some quarters), and we generally agree unless, as Diana says, they act in a way that is in contravention of the Treaties. We also discuss the possibility that on Wednesday Merkel may call for legislation on holocaust denial. Collectively we have no problem with legislation on that at Member State level (given that there are different circumstances in different countries) but do not think it needs to be at EU level. Other countries do not have legislation that works like our ‘inciting race hatred’ and often they try to improve this via the European route but too much else gets added in.

18.00 Plenary opens with welcoming of Romania and Bulgaria. MEPs are all in new seats because our Romanian and Bulgarian colleagues have been slotted in and we sit alphabetically within Groups, so we wander up and down the rows of our previous positions wondering where we now should be. It seems to defy logic, some people have moved a long way and others not so far, but I guess it is to do with how the margins between the Groups have also moved. ALDE is much larger now, so we have spread sideways and by some strange quirk I am almost the identical seat to before. There is a ceremony of moving the Bulgarian and Romanian flags from their position slightly separate from ‘the 25’ into their alphabetic positions, shakings of hands and so forth and we stand for the European Anthem. I recall how the melody of the finale of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was the first ‘real composer’ piece of music I learnt on the piano when I was 7 years old – the fifth tune in my first book and from that moment I was a Beethoven addict.

We then have one minute of silence for the deaths of two Ecuadorians, caused by ETA in Madrid.

The new Group formation is announced (Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty) and there is a little verbal skirmish attempting to demonstrate it is just a group of convenience rather than a real political group (which I think is probably true) but they have ticked the right boxes to be considered ‘proper’. Poettering then moves into a summary of the first half of this term of the Parliament.

19.00 – 20.45 I attend the Presidential debate organised by European Voice, which starts late as they are all still in plenary. First presentation is by the left winger Wurtz. He wants an alternative to the ‘liberal’ (French interpretation) view of Europe and wants to be more socialist than the socialists. Bonde is next and says the same as he said earlier in group. At the end of his speech he presents Poettering with a small crown on a cushion, representing that he is just ‘coronated’ as of right. Monica Frassoni is next and she is much better than previously, concentrating more on what she would do rather than getting at others. On this performance I expect she will get a fair number of votes. Poettering is last and the chair even offers him a bit more time in order to respond to some of the digs that have been made about the system. He declines and says he will take the same amount of time as the rest. Thank goodness for that fair mindedness, and this graciousness worth more votes than two minutes could buy. He gives a competent performance, but not inspiring or as substantially reforming as really satisfies liberal appetite. Questions and answers follow, for the main part the same type as you always get at hustings (how to improve voter turnout etc) for which there are never any satisfactory answers. On balance I rate Monica best, but everyone concedes that it will be Poettering and are nice to him and he even says he will win himself.