Commission set to propose ban on seal products

Following a lengthy campaign from animal welfare lobbyists, the European Commission has revealed it is planning to propose a ban on seal products within the EU.

EU Observer has reported that Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, plans to propose a ban on fur if a country cannot prove it has been obtained in a humane way.

The proposal should fly through the parliament if the Written Directive calling for a ban on the import, export and sale of seal products is anything to go by. Back in September 2006 it was signed by a record number of MEPs and as such became the position of the parliament.

The article suggests that Dimas has no plans to call for an outright ban but wants to ensure that any seals culled are done so quickly and cleanly. His main intention, it would appear, is to help stop the practice of skinning seals while they are still alive.

Some will be disappointed that the plans do not go further but it is a start and, should it be approved, will help drive up standards and eliminate the very worst aspects of the cull.

It is also an example of how EU citizens can play a part in influencing legislation. The campaign for a ban on seal products came from animal welfare charities and lobbyists and was driven by the sheer weight of mail many MEPs received on the issue. With the European Parliament’s support the case for a ban was strengthened and the European Commission has now responded with these early proposals, which will hopefully improve the welfare of thousands of seals.

The truth about migrants and crime

An interesting if wholly unsurprising report from the Police confirms that migrants to the UK from eastern Europe are not responsible for waves of crime.

As you would expect, levels of crime from eastern European migrants are in line with the rate of crime of the general population.

You can read in more detail about the report on the Guardian and Telegraph websites.

Of course there is one set of people who will be astonished by this news, Daily Mail readers. While researching this blog I couldn’t find a mention of the report on the Daily Mail’s website anywhere, a paper that has previously claimed that eastern European migrants are responsible for one in 10 crimes.

But I wanted to be sure so searched through the Daily Mail's site via Google for mentions of “Immigrants” (you can do it like this). There are thousands upon thousands of hits, none of them mentioning that migrants are in no way responsible for waves of crimes!

Edit on April 17:

It seems the Mail were just a little slow on the uptake. Instead of a screaming front page headline the story is dumped on page 12 of Thursday's paper. Incredibly, and without a hint of irony, James Slack's analysis piece asked, "Who claimed there was a migrant crimewave in the first place?"

And if you think that's astonishing, how about the Express who defied logic and all the evidence to the contrary by plastering Thursday's front page with "IMMIGRANTS BRING MORE CRIME" before going on to quote the report which said, "the evidence does not support theories of a large-scale crime wave generated through migration."

In between the bluster, the blind prejudice and underlying hatred, the Express did find one rise in crime which featured migrants in the report. It was a "huge surge in the exploitation of migrants."

Eurosceptics target Ireland

A few months ago UKIP leader Nigel Farage trumpeted on his blog that the Independence and Democracy group (that his UKIP MEPs are the main part of) had decided to "donate a substantial sum of money" to the Irish "No" campaign for the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

At one level, it is amusing to see UKIP, which frequently makes shrill accusations about "Brussels meddling with Britain", trying to meddle in a referendum campaign in another country.

However, at another level, this is a serious matter and potentially illegal. The rules governing donations for referendum campaigns in Ireland are very clear. Donations are illegal if they fall into the following categories:

"A donation, of whatever value, from an individual (other than an Irish citizen) who resides outside the island of Ireland" or,

"A donation from a body corporate or unicorporated body of persons which does not keep an office in the island of Ireland from which one or more of its principle activities is directed".

Of course, UKIP knows this and will no doubt try to keep their donations quiet or find an indirect route to channel their money. The well-heeled eurosceptics from across Europe are targeting Ireland. Anyone who gets wind of such donations should inform the Irish Commission on Standards in Public Office, the body charged with making sure that the referendum is fair and that Ireland's rules on spending - which gives equal amounts of public money to both sides - are not subverted.

Bushill-Matthews fights a Euromyth

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw that a Tory, Philip Bushill-Matthews, MEP has written to the Birmingham Post to rebut a Eurosceptic myth about transport policy. Normally stridently Eurosceptic, Bushill-Matthews rightly points out that a driver whose vehicle is registered in another EU country can evade prosecution for traffic offences in the UK because of the difficulty in verifying his/her home address. Common EU rules could be part of the solution to this problem.

I wonder what Dan Hannan (the Conservatives' chief myth-maker in Europe) thinks of his colleague's efforts!

The trend of grandiose titles

As next year's European election approaches, I am amused to see that some of my colleagues are prone to give themselves grand titles. I see that Edward Mcmillan-Scott refers to himself as "Britain's senior MEP". If he means the longest-serving member, he isn't: Bill Newton Dunn was first elected in 1979 and Stephen Hughes, Caroline Jackson David Martin, Glyn Ford and James Elles have all, like Edward, been in the European Parliament since 1984. If he means that he is an august former leader of the Conservative MEPs, he is one of four still in the Parliament (Kirkhope, Evans, Newton Dunn) as their in-fighting tends to oust their leader every two or three years. If he means he is one of the 14 Vice Presidents, he is not the only one, as Diana Wallis is also a Vice President.

Talking of Diana, she in turn has referred to herself as the "first woman Vice President" which is patently incorrect - there have been dozens. She is not even the first British woman VP as Lady Elles was one back in the 1980s.

Watch out for more imaginative descriptions as the elections approach!

Annotated treaties on my website

For anyone still interested in the differences between the Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty, I now have a consolidated version of the treaties on my website, which has been annotated by Peadar ó Broin at the Irish Institute of International and European Affairs.

The whole text is colour coded so you can identify which parts of the text have been introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, which parts are from previous treaties and importantly which parts were in the Constitution but have been dropped from the Lisbon Treaty.

While the consolidated text still weighs in at a hefty 386 pages long, it will certainly be a useful tool for academics and specialists, while just a quick glance at it proves that there are plenty of differences between the Lisbon Treaty and the Constitution.

Click to read.

The Record Europe and parliamentry scrutiny

I'm on this week's edition of the BBC's Record Europe with the Chair of the Commons EU Scrutiny commitee, Michael Connarty MP and a Danish MEP, Dan Jorgensen. We were discussing how to improve national parliamentry scrutiny of EU legislation.

You can watch the whole programme on this subject (we come in at the end) online by clicking here of if you have digital it will be on the BBC Parliament channel once a day all this week.