JURI and ECON questions

8.30 Carol and I spend an hour finishing the amendments and submitting them, along with the usual emails.

9.30 Go to the Equitable Life Committee. We discuss the first draft of the report which is not yet public.

10.30 Into JURI for an exchange of views with Charlie McCreevy. I have three questions. One on shareholder voting rights and what he understands by proportionality. His reply indicated he is not fixed on one share one vote as some say. The second question is on Insurance guarantees and I seem to get a "not much doing yet" response. In my third question I say there has been an article in European Voice that the patent strategy communication has been delayed because of the French Presidential elections and we have also previously been similarly told that the copyright levies communication has been delayed due to a request to Barroso from the French, so is there anything else in his remit that is being delayed for the French election that we have not yet heard about.

Everyone laughs and Charlie quips that he is thinking of a full harmonisation directive for election times. He says he was told that the levies matter was politically sensitive. Anyway, we will hopefully be revisiting that with an oral question. We do not get to discuss the legal services opinion on the European Patent Litigation Agreement, and there is a debate about whether it is confidential. Then we have a closed session that discusses whether or not to lift immunity from prosecution from a fellow MEP. There seem to be these quite often and they can arise from allegations of libel or other damage and there may be Parliamentary privilege or the equivalent.

13.30 Meeting with other Group members about amendments to the football report. All my amendments are agreed and I am able to tweak those of Toine and Ignasi so we all more or less reach agreement.

14.30 Back to the office and collect papers for ECON. We have Neelie Kroes coming and I also have to lead the discussion on the amendments of my Innovation opinion.

15.00 Into ECON. I have two questions for Neelie, but she gives such long answers to others and I am in the last round so I only ask one about whether government bonds can continue to be traded in the same way as now given the restriction to one platform (which could be a competition issue) and the interest of Citadel in trading them. She says she will send a written reply. We then go on in committee to discuss roaming and other things and I am left with 3 minutes for my opinion so we defer it until tomorrow.

19.00 A briefing dinner with BT about spectrum and communication issues.