Debate on Donnici

I am lucky this week as the ECON committee is not having any meetings, I have nothing of mine on JURI and I had kept the rest of the diary free so that I could be in the UK for the elections. Of course the best laid plans do not work out perfectly and I had to do an emergency dash to Brussels to attend a meeting this afternoon to deal with the credentials of new MEP Donnici. He is there today to address the meeting.

Frankly I was appalled at the conduct of the meeting. The story is that in Italy the supreme Court has ruled that Donnici was in fact the proper MEP, but the majority of the Committee seems to be deluding itself into thinking they have a right to over-rule the decision of the court (which is all about whether the MEP he is to replace had in fact withdrawn). The correct reading of all the documents as far as I can see and all the precedents are that the Member States have the final say, provided it is all legally correct as far as the Member State law is concerned, which is obviously the case here. The Parliament’s legal services agree.

The chair Gargrni tried to push it to a vote, saying the legal opinion is not all that important as it is a political decision. (!!!) Diana Wallis got the vote deferred on the basis that the opinion of the legal services had not been circulated. At least members should be shown to have known what they were disregarding. The vote will be tomorrow, so I will not be there but we will be able to have someone else there in my place. At least I was there today when Donnici came. Now back to the UK for more footslogging.