What Sharon Did Last Week (29th August - 2nd September)
Monday
On Monday, Sharon left her house at 6.30am to travel to Brussels by Eurostar, arriving at the European Parliament by midday. Having caught up with her assistant Constance, Sharon set to work planning the week and replying to urgent emails.
At 2pm, Sharon chaired an extraordinary meeting of the Committee to which President of the ECB, Jean-Claude Trichet, was invited to speak. In her opening remarks, Sharon said that dealing with the Eurozone crisis reminded her of the quote from Sherlock Holmes: eliminate the impossible and you are left with the improbable no matter how unlikely that seems.
At 3pm, President of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski and Commissioner Olli Rehn appeared before the Committee to discuss urgent measures to combat the worsening euro crisis. Due to the nature of the discussion, Committee went on until around 7.30pm.
Tuesday
Sharon was picked up at her flat at 6am and taken to the BBC Brussels studios to do two live interviews: the first with Wake Up to Money for BBC Radio 5 Live (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b013yw1s 21 minutes 30 seconds in), and the second for BBC Radio 4´s Today programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console 16 minutes in). Sharon pointed put strongly that although politicians should not be slaves to the financial markets, neither could they be ignored. And they didn´t wait for politicians to come back from holiday!
Sharon came into the office at 9am and had a meeting with her team to go over the weeks ahead, which as well as the usual Chair duties in Committee and MEP duties in Brussels and abroad, also involve 14 speaking engagements between now and Christmas!
During the remainder of the morning, Sharon worked on the still unfinished economic governance package as well as the Eurozone crisis.
At 1.30pm ,Sharon had a meeting with the ABI (Association of British Industry) with regards to the ongoing legislation on solvency for insurance companies, called Omnibus II, which takes into account the new powers of the European Supervisory Authorities. Sharon was a Shadow rapporteur on Solvency II so she has ideas about how best to tackle some of the outstanding issues.
At 3pm, Sharon met with representatives from La Caixa, the Catalan savings bank, to discuss potential impact from the upcoming CRD4 legislation.
Just before 4pm, Sharo nwas whisked away to the EP studio to record an interview for CNN on to what extent European politicians should watch the markets when making new rules and regulation (http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/business/2011/08/30/qmb.sharon.bowles.cnn?iref=allsearch).
At 5.15pm, Sharon and her assistant Constance went into a trialogue, negotiations with Council and the Commission, on the increase in EU shares in the capital of the EBRD, which went on till 8pm.
Wednesday
Sharon started the day in the Chair of ECON Committee at 9am. There was a very busy agenda including the 2012 Budget, Online Gambling, the taxation of the energy sector and Omnibus II. Some of the discussions ran over time, so the afternoon´s agenda had to be expanded.
Directly after this,Sharon went to a meeting of the ALDE members of ECON to discuss voting on the 2012 budget and online gambling reports. Happily, Sharon´s amendments on online gambling had been taken into consideration in the compromise amendments, and were later voted through in Committee.
At 3.30pm, Sharon returned to Committee to Chair discussions over the Mortgage directive and a European dimension to sport, as well as to hold the votes.
After returning to the office to catch up on emails,Sharon met with Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the ALDE group, at 7pm to go over the latest on economic governance.
Thursday
Sharon came into the office to go through the diary, respond to emails, deal with administrative matters and start thinking about her upcoming speeches. She had a meeting with the head of the ECON secretariat at 11am.
At 1pm, Sharon left to catch a Eurostar to London as Thursday and Friday were designated "constituency days".
Friday
Sharon took a range of phone calls relating to long term investment and from the media. In the afternoon she went on a photo-shoot in Milton Keynes and then spoke at the Milton Keynes Business Leader's Partnership on the euro crisis.