What Sharon Did Last Week (13th - 17th June)
Monday
Leaving home at 6.30am as usual, Sharon boarded the 8.27 Eurostar to Brussels arriving on a day observed by Belgians as a public holiday.Sharon came back to Brussels a day early because it was the LDEPP (Liberal Democrat European Parliamentary Party) away-day. Not necessarily involving anything resembling ´away` as such, indeed the day's events took place in the EP! Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity for Sharon to catch up with her party colleagues and discuss future Lib Dem strategy, both in Brussels and back home.
Tuesday
Tuesday started with Sharon chairing an Economic Governance trialogue which discussed the Ferreira report on macro-economic imbalances alongside the Council and the Commission. The meeting lasted four hours.
Sharon then met with a Danish delegation of MPs to discuss CRDIV (Capital Requirements Directive) which is the newest instalment of a Directive dealing with how much capital banks are required to hold. It is currently at the stage of being finalised by the Commission for release in July, after which the Parliament and Council will start working on amendments. The reason the Danes are particularly interested in this Directive is that they will assume the rotating Presidency of the Council in January 2012, which is about the time CRDIV will be at a very active stage in the EP. They also have some concerns about how it will affect their banks and mortgage market. The EU applies the Basel banking proposals to all banks, not just the large banks for which it is designed, and this means some tailoring and proportionality is required. Many of the amendments which will eventually be made in both the Council and Parliament are likely to address these needs.
After this, at 2pm, Sharon was supposed to meet with her ECON ALDE colleagues to discuss the appearance of Mario Draghi, candidate for the President of the European Central Bank, before the ECON committee later that day. The preliminary meeting was to decide the lines of questioning for Mr Draghi as well as any other issues the group members may have regarding Economic Governance. However, Sharon was unable to get to the meeting due to work that had to be done on the Economic Governance package, which right now is gobbling up every spare moment of attention.
The hearing with Mario Draghi commenced at 3pm. The meeting was packed with press and Mr Draghi came in for some penetrative questioning, to which he replied with conviction. As usual the meeting was web streamed.
Around 3pm, Joe from Sharon´s Constituency office in Berkhamsted arrived in Brussels to spend a few days observing what Sharon and his Brussels-based colleagues do day-to-day. Over the four days, he was treated to an EP hearing, two trialogues, several meetings and an overload of information!
Sharon ended what was rather a hectic day by debriefing the European Parliament's Secretariat for an hour at 6pm about the day's events in ECON and next steps in the Economic Governance package.
Wednesday
Sharon Bowles Amending the text on screen in Economic Governance trialogue
Sharon started the day by meeting the ALDE leader Guy Verhofstadt in his office from at 8.30am. She then met with her Liberal Democrat colleague from the UK, Michael Moore MP, who is the Secretary of State for Scotland. They discussed Scotland's banking and financial services sector and how that will be affected by regulation. Sharon already meets with many representatives of the Scottish financial industry, but this was a useful catch up with Mike feeling confident that Scotland was not forgotten.
Sharon then went straight to the ECON committee where she chaired until12.30pm. The main discussions were about the European Semester - which will become a regular feature in the planning of Member States´ budgets particularly in the Eurozone. There was also a vote on Insurance Guarantee schemes and the approval of Mario Draghi for presidency of the ECB.
At 3pm, the final Economic Governance trialogue started and went on to become a behemoth of political discourse - it didn't finish until 3 o´ clock the next morning! At 1am, Sharon cheerfully reminded weary negotiators that she had the room booked to 8am - one of many little tactics she used as chair to keep it going. Also for the first time ever in a trialogue, ECON always being the trendsetter, they had a big screen for real time insertion of agreements into the text. This was because the text literally had to go straight out on the Council side. A lot of progress was made but two or three items will probably have to be escalated to ministerial level for finalisation on the Council side. The Economic Governance package will be voted on next week in the plenary session.
Thursday
On Thursday, Sharon had several meetings and phone calls relating to the previous night´s outcomes. From11am until 2pm she had to refocus on short selling as they had the third political trialogue for that.
Sharon spent the rest of the day and evening taking phone calls and holding meetings with colleagues concerning the voting on Economic Governance; which groups are in support of what, and how to deal with the situation if the Council can not reach agreement with the Parliament on the 'scrutiny reservation' items. There were also technical matters to resolve with the Secretariat and Plenary Services because of the tight deadline for translation once a text is agreed She also discussed the amendments filed on insolvency proceedings in company law with her assistant Constance, as this is an ECON opinion for which she is rapporteur.
Friday
On Friday morning, Sharon met with the head of the Autoritié des Normes Comptables (French Accounting Standards Authority) at 9.30am to discuss International Financial Reporting Standards and accountancy in general. She then had a meeting with the ECON Secretariat discussing the latest news coming from the Council side on the trialogue outcome and more technical matters the next steps in Committee and Plenary next week.
Sharon returned to London on the 12.29 Eurostar, exchanging text messages on Economic Governance with various parties en route as the matter was discussed at COREPER (the meeting of the permanent representatives of the Member States), arriving in London in time to grab a late lunch meet-up with her younger son, Damian Horton. She then proceeded to a meeting on CRDIV and retail banking matters at the Treasury. Clutching a pile of policy papers and amendment drafts before she left the office, Sharon mentioned the majority of her weekend will be spent reading through said papers in preparation for the series of votes that will be coming before her next week in the Parliament. On Saturday she has to return to London for a lunch meeting with the board of the Goldman Sachs Group who have asked her to talk to them about European legislative procedures and transatlantic cooperation on legislation.