This week the Liberal Democrats are playing host to the wider European Liberal family – the ALDE Party’s big annual congress, which is taking place in London on today, Friday and Saturday.
Over 900 Liberals from across the EU and beyond will gather in Canary Wharf to draw up the common manifesto for the 2014 European Parliament elections and consider nominees for the Liberal candidate for European Commission President.
The European Liberal family includes three current Prime Ministers: Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, Andris Ansip of Estonia and Alenka Bratušek of Slovenia, and they will soon be joined by Xavier Bettel in Luxembourg. At regional level, Artur Mas i Gavarró heads the powerful regional government of Catalonia in Spain. Over a quarter of European Commissioners are Liberals. Liberal parties are in government in 16 different European countries, as well as being the third largest political group in the European Parliament.
This week at the Congress in London, five of our eight Liberal Commissioners will be in attendance in addition to countless Liberal government ministers from Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and of course the UK. They will all be leaving the placid civilities of government life behind and immersing themselves in party politics. Nick Clegg himself will be opening the Congress on today and delivering the keynote speech on Friday.
The Liberal family is a truly formidable network – and we benefit massively from being part of it. Through working with our Liberal allies in Europe, we have been able to bring about a broad range of significant reforms: an exemption for small businesses from EU accounting rules, a radical overhaul of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy and cutting mobile phone roaming charges in Europe to name but a few. Even the Daily Mail has had to admit that the Liberal Democrats are the hardest working British political party in the European Parliament.
The Tories, on the other hand, are completely isolated. Since 2009 when Cameron decided to pull them out of the powerful centre-right European People’s Party to create their own ‘odds and sods’ ECR group, they have had to resort to shouting from the sidelines. They have no European Commissioners, and one lonely Prime Minister – Cameron himself. And in order to piece the group together the Tories have had to associate with some pretty unsavoury characters – politicians that have been accused of everything from Nazi glorification to anti-Semitism. In fact, many of them are hardly any better than UKIP’s bedfellows – who are not just Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant but at times alleged to be xenophobic and downright racist.
As the party of IN, Liberal Democrats understand that the best way to stand up of for Britain in Brussels is to build alliances and work towards EU-wide reform. That is why this weekend in London, we will be debating a range of important issues with our Liberal colleagues including the EU-US free trade agreement, financial regulation and European cooperation in the fight against crime. So while the Tories look inward and try to mask their deep internal divisions over Europe, we are looking outward and forging partnerships abroad so that we can deliver jobs, prosperity and security for the UK and Europe as a whole.
* Sir Graham Watson is Liberal Democrat MEP for the South West of England.