The Donnici Code

9.00 Arrive in office. Listen to a little bit of the roaming debate. Things are moving a little on the Donnici matter with amendments. It seems to be very much an Italian thing now and there are calls to be ‘respectful’ of parliamentary processes. If I speak I do not think I will be respectful I will say it is shameful and will bring shame on the Parliament when the sophistry of the arguments put forward is exposed (which I would expect the courts to do). However we have very little speaking time. I have already had a minute of my Gierek report time taken just to give us 2 minutes and a minute for me and a minute for Cocilova is not very much. As it means so much to the Italians to speak on this matter I will probably have to give Cocilova priority over myself (again).

10.00 We have a meeting on the amendments to the financial services white paper. There is some good discussion and some progress is made but we do not get anywhere on the sections about hedge funds. I indicate that it has to be revisited. We keep at it until the bell rings for us to go and vote. We will need a lot more time I think and I wonder whether it is realistic to try and vote on this in our next committee week as that only gives us as short time on Monday 4 June to reach agreement. Anyway, we shall see. .

12.00 – 13.00 votes. No incidents with headphones or otherwise. We vote on the Lulling report on excise duty. It is a mess and conflicting amendments are passed so at the end the rapporteur signals to her group to vote against and it falls.

13.00 Kangaroo Group lunch on the privatisation of postal services. I have decided to go because I want to find out more about how different universal service options have worked. I have to leave early before all the discussions end for another meeting.

14.00 Meeting with the Executive Director and several others from the ICHR Kashmir Centre on the Kashmir report. We discuss the original report, the committee amendments and those for plenary. I say that my ‘bottom line’ will be the same as in the Committee voting, if an amendment gets through that includes self determination, then I will vote in favour even if other amendments have been lost, but if nothing on self determination gets through then I will vote against. They seem to think this is a reasonable dividing line. This whole issue has of course been rumbling on all week, and last, with a lot of work going on behind the scenes to get agreement as far as possible from Emma.

15.00 I had intended to go to an SME intergoup meeting on labour law, but as yet I have not finalised the voting on the Gierek report nor worked out what to put into my 2 minute speech. I am still trying to amend paragraph about open standards in order to clarify that the definition given is not an official Commission policy (which it is not). However since the wording proposal came from the Committee secretariat and all Groups signed up to it nobody now wants to concede it may not be accurate. It is rather annoying that they say ‘it is only an own initiative report’. I reply that it is no excuse to be inaccurate! I have circulated a note, but since there will be objection from the floor if I put in an oral amendment there is really no point. Trying to delete the paragraph will be misinterpreted as an attack on an idealistic point, so in the end I will probably give up on this and satisfy myself with correcting the patent bits. I decide to concentrate my speech on three of the things that have been included in the report from my ECON opinion and to deal with the patent issue. Dealing with this issue and other emails and correspondence takes me up to time for Group.

19.00 Group meeting. We have an exchange of views with Gary Kasparov on the political situation in Russia. It is very interesting indeed and he is a good speaker.

21.00 Into the hemicycle for the debate on the Donnici credentials. I have agreed not to speak. All the speakers in the debate are Italian and they remain more deferential to the dignity of the legal affairs committee than I feel inclined to be on this matter. Gargarni gives a rather better presentation that he has in committee on the subject – just as well as this is public and not in camera. However I still believe it fatally flawed. Here is the gist of the affair as I understand it. I have dubbed it the Donnici code because it is a bit unbelievable.

The Donnici Code. At the time of the Italian elections for the European Parliament one candidate, Orchetto who would have been elected as an MEP, withdrew. At that time he was already a member of the Italian Senate, which he would have had to resign in order to take up the MEP seat. Further he was on a composite list of opposition candidates (everyone except Berlusconi’s party) and as is common practice in Italy famous people go at the top of a list to indicate the type of list, but there are agreements that they will withdraw. Later on after the Italian General Election when some MEPs gave up their seats to go to the national Parliament, Orchetto changed his mind about being an MEP and withdrew his withdrawal which was agreed was possible by the Italian initial court. This prevented Donnici, who was next in line, from becoming an MEP. Donnici objected both to the European Parliament and to the appeal court in Italy.

In the Parliament the legal affairs committee approved the credentials of Orchetto (that is turning down Donnici’s objection) it seems among other things on the basis that it is necessary to follow the ruling of a member state on who is an MEP. But then the Italian Supreme Court upheld Donnici’s complaint and ruled that it was not possible to withdraw a withdrawal and therefore the correct MEP was in fact Donnici and the European Parliament was informed.

At this stage it seemed as if it would then be a routine matter to reapply the logic that approved Orchetto, i.e that the Member State ruling applies. In accordance with tradition, and because approval of credentials is not normally controversial, Gargarni, the chair of the legal affairs committee undertook the rapporteurship. He then constructed an argument that Orchetto should remain an MEP.

As far as I am able to sensibly interpret the presentation (which as I have said was much better in plenary than at the in camera committee stage) it is broadly that the Italian court did not take into account EU law and therefore the only mechanism to get that taken into account is to get it reviewed by the ECJ. The refusal to approve credentials does that in that both the Italian State and Donnici can take the European Parliament to the ECJ.

So that is the proposed ‘mechanism’ and I suppose it has some logic. However it seems to me that the EU law that it is alleged has not been taken into account is not relevant and the interpretation argued to make it to make it relevant is distinctly dodgy. It essentially defines a candidate on a list as a potential MEP, then applies rules for ‘not mandating an MEP’ to the potential MEP and stretched the not mandating (which I had assumed meant instructing how to vote) to any withdrawal agreement or agreement about resigning from a list.

Now I can fully understand the Italian MEPs wishing in general to get rid of their list deals for future elections, I do not think it is fair to use this as the excuse to try and extract a comment upon it from the ECJ. Anyhow that is just about the most favourable way I can express my views. [If you read on to tomorrow when we vote you will see that Graham Watson, our ALDE Group leader says ‘see you in court.]’

22.00 ish Back to the plenary for the Innovation debate. I am too tired to stay to the end so I leave after my speech. Then back to my hotel.