Last week, my colleague David Casa and myself presented a report of our work over the past year. Yes, a year has already passed since the European Parliament election.
It was an opportunity to give a public account of our work and to stand up to be counted in front of the media.
At the start of my new mandate last year, I was elected by my party, the EPP, to lead the parliamentary group in the committee that deals with civil liberties, justice and home affairs, known as Libe Committee.
I feel that this was the single most important development in my parliamentary life so far because it has enabled me to penetrate the real workings of the Parliament like never before. It is here that I focus most of my work because committee work is by far the most time-consuming parliamentary duty.
As a coordinator, I am responsible for the group's work in this committee across the board, leading a strong group of 40 EPP colleagues in the committee, between full members and substitute members. We make up the largest group in the 55-strong Libe Committee. However, we do not have a majority and this means that I am often involved in negotiations with other political groups in order to reach consensus and to hammer out compromises.
On some issues, it is possible to muster a majority with the Liberals or with the Socialist groups but, on others, it is difficult. It is most difficult with the Greens and the Communists because their position is often extreme, at least from our standpoint.
As a coordinator, I speak on behalf of the group on committee dossiers, I prepare the group's position on different policy dossiers, including on how we should vote and I assign committee work among EPP colleagues.
In this capacity, over the past year, I have touched upon a number of issues that are of obvious importance to Malta, notably immigration. These include increasing budget allocations to EU programmes dealing with immigration; pushing burden-sharing further up the agenda through initiatives such as the Malta pilot project for intra-EU resettlement, the adoption of the law establishing the new European Asylum Support Office and the Frontex dossier with all its complexities. In the latter case, I have been appointed as the Parliament's rapporteur on the revision of the enabling legislation of this agency. I hope to submit my report with my legislative amendments after the summer break.
But this committee is not just about immigration. It is about the entire area of civil liberties, justice and home affairs.
Thus, over the past year, I have worked on the Parliament's contribution to the EU's new roadmap in this area for the next five years. It is a detailed programme which contains a long list of concrete measures, ranging from citizens' rights to security and to easier access to justice. I hope it will make it easier for EU citizens to feel at home with their rights wherever they go in the EU.
This wide remit of the committee also exposed me to other dossiers such as visas, where I raised the Libyan-Swiss debacle on the Schengen visa both at committee and at plenary level. I also drew up reports to secure visa-free travel with six non-EU countries.
The fight against terrorism is also on our agenda and this exposed me to cooperation with the US on a number of fronts. Thus, over the past six months, I have been actively involved on issues such as the adequacy of body scanners and on the agreement relating to the transmission of banking transaction (Swift) data from the EU to the US. Negotiations should come to a head just this week.
This is just a snapshot and there is so much more, not least the weekly constituency work in Malta, which is crucial. For no matter how hard we work in Brussels, it is our presence in Malta to communicate our work and to understand people's concerns better that makes all the difference.
Have a look at the full report of our work over the past year. It is available on this weblink: http://one.abakus.com.mt/hosts/simonbusuttil/site/content/docs/1862010151530Rapport%20ta'%20hidma%20_June%202009%20June%202010_.pdf .
www.simonbusuttil.eu
Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.