Equitable life, Statistics and Communications

8.30 Arrive in the office. Sort out papers and head for the JURI committee. Votes are due at 9.30 but are delayed. Eventually I leave because the Equitable life committee of Enquiry has a discussion on its report which is more important. Anyway, I know that the EPP are supporting a few of my amendments in JURI to the innovation report which will carry them whether I am there or not. The others that they do not support will fall whether I am there or not!

10.15 Arrive in the Equitable life committee. Peter Skinner is speaking about what was meant to be confidential after our last meeting and should there have been a press release from the rapporteur. We then move on to discussing the report which has been amended to include my and others comments during the informal amendment period. Most are content. Peter is not and seems to want more about Solvency ll (which I thought I had covered reasonably well) and makes some points about other directives that could be mentioned. Some of the Conservative members criticise Peter for being political, and in doing so are political themselves. I eventually intervene to point out the changes that have been made to introduce solvency ll and also say that we have to make sure (in ECON when we do the directive later this year) that it does solve all the problems that we are told it does. I am not yet 100% convinced that it does.

11.15 The ECON members of the Equitable life committee leave because we have a discussion in ECON now on solvency ll. A bit of a mad morning with three committees all doing relevant things.

12.45 The European Parliament Financial Services Forum lunch. This is on the EU-US dialogue. The main thrusts of the dialogue are on intellectual property, standards and financial services, so in many ways I am more involved than everyone else as I cover all three topics. However lunch is on the financial aspects.

14.30 Back to the office and a telephone conference with Radermacher of the German Presidency about the statistics directives. I tell him we are still awaiting the opinion of legal services on comitology but I am hoping it is as we agreed at our meeting. We then have a useful discussion on the purpose of the advisory board. I find this a more helpful than the discussions with the Commission were in terms of getting a handle on what is really intended. However this is probably largely due to the fact that I am more up to speed now. Additionally I have located a UK expert that I can also consult next week.

16.00 Meeting with members of GSM representing communication operators. They really wanted to know about payments, so I told them I expect the Presidency text as agreed by Council to be approved without any or much change by Parliament. They are happy with that. We also discussed that the e payements directive will now need to be brought in line, but that was always the intention. Seems to me the capital requirements in that were made too high by a factor of 10.

16.30 Meeting with Timothy baker of LIBA. We discuss financial services white paper and various other issues.

17.00 Tomorrow the industry committee votes on roaming and the innovation report and I have got myself a place as a substitute in the voting. The voting lists are long and compromise amendments are appearing so we start checking those. Media are very interested in roaming and I agree to do an interview with five live at 8am in the morning. Leave at 7pm