Mumsnet goes to the European Parliament: your thoughts?

Right then, it all got a bit more lively after introductions from the authors of the two IWD reports. LOTS of MEPs got up to make very short speeches ? they each get between 1 and 2 mins ? there?s a giant clock counting down to tell them how long they?ve got left, so they panic and speed up dramatically at the end, with the poor translators squeaking to keep up. Not sure what happens if they go over ? a big klaxon?

Most MEPs welcomed the reports - a few said they couldn?t support any moves towards quotas for the boards of listed companies but on the whole reception was positive and sedate.

It all went a bit off-piste when Godfrey Bloom, who?s on the Women?s Rights and Gender Equality Committee for UKIP (notwithstanding his well-rehearsed views in this area), harangued parliament for making ?a dog?s breakfast? of things, repeating his point that UK small businesses would have to be ?stark staring mad to employ a young woman? if the Pregnant Worker?s Directive passes into law (not on the agenda today). On boardroom quotas (?what kind of madness is this?!?) he claimed that no-one would believe that women had got their jobs on merit ? an entirely defensible position only slightly undermined by his roaring that ?none of you have done a real job in your lives or you would UNDERSTAND.? [blinks]

Mass raising of blue cards (how MEPs signal that they want to disagree). Eva Britt Svenson, who?s Chair of the committee, responded that it?s not stark staring mad to want parental leave, and the Nordic countries which go all out for this also have the highest rate of female employment with consequent benefit to their economies (the EU is committed to 75% employability to support an aging population)

Bloom (booming): ?I?m not INTERESTED in your country or others, only in mine! Draconian laws won?t help employment! I wish you would come into the real world ? hands up who?s had a real job!?

This was followed by a sea of blue cards: Edite Estrela (Vice Chair of the commiteee) said that the UK?s problem was that it had weak maternity pay provision, and that 33 weeks of it were little more than symbolic.

Bloom (really quite heated): ?Our problem is that we have given up self-government! THAT?s our problem!?

Estrela: I thank Mr Bloom for his opinions - they are widespread, although those who hold them tend on the whole to keep quiet about it. I want to ask him: are children the children of women only, or of fathers too?

Bloom: Children are the responsibility of their parents and no-one else. Someone shouldn?t have to take responsibility for his neighbour's children. The more personal responsibility we have in the EU and round the world the better the world would be in my view.

And with that, the Member left the Chamber. The Europeans must have been rather taken aback - and that was before a BNP member appeared to compare the resolutions to a Trotskyist plot to persuade people that they were being discriminated against, and decried the fact that the word ?discrimination? had become the ultimate evil..

It's all go here.

Right, after only 30 minutes wandering hopefully through identical corridors, I?ve just found the press gallery in the Chamber (basically a gigantic hollow wooden ball at the centre of the main building.) They?re debating a report on the Institutions? administrative budget and I?m listening via headphones to a simultaneous translation, which in itself is a rather dislocating experience, particularly since I currently have NO IDEA who the various members speaking are or which country they represent.

So far it is very sedate, though one MEP (not British) did just harangue the chair in heavily-accented English over the creation of 50 new posts which ?pay more than the British Prime Minister earns?. She peaked with a bizarrely British tabloid-style declamation: ?STOP this rip-off!!!?. Perhaps she was reading from a speech prepared by the British members of her Euro-sceptic group? It was most odd, though not as odd as the Danish official who told me, while processing my accreditation, that she once bought a black cab in Birmingham on a whim, and drove it back to Denmark.

It?s all a bit boggling so far to be honest.

One quick observation before I hit the sack - the lovely press officer who's trying to ensure I don't end up in the laundry corridor instead of the Chamber tomorrow pointed out how few of the officials here are British - as the number of schoolchildren studying a European language has declined, so has the number of UK graduates applying for these (pretty fantastic) jobs. Two European languages is a minimum. Thoughts?

OK, l'Europe - je suis arrivée! And at only 9 train-hours door-to-door, the continent really is just a hop and a skip away .

So. Strasbourg itself is very pretty. For a comprehensive picture of the European Parliament building, imagine the Telford HQ of a medium-sized conglomerate, scale up x 1000, add a bajillion corridors, walkways and mezzanines, multiply by Heathrow, subtract fresh air and you'll be in the ballpark.

At 9pm the place was still a hive of activity - the entire Parliament shuttles to Strasbourg from Brussels once a month for a plenary session, which today started at 5pm and looked to go on well into the night. Disappointingly all the Eurocrats I've met so far have faces, and couldn't be more friendly and helpful. They are like us (but cheerful and urbane )

Tomorrow I'll be in the Chamber listening to the International Women's Day debates on the 2010 report on Equality Between Men and Women, and on the feminisation of poverty - and then at a smaller discussion about how to increase the numbers of women in positions of influence. With luck I'll also be talking to a policy bod from the Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee, to get a sense of past achievements and future challenges - so speak now or forever hold your peas if you've got points to make or questions to ask.

Good point Leningrad. If 'parent' were a protected characteristic, there wouldn't seem a logical argument against expanding that to 'caring' - anyone?

Also perhaps of interest: thought I should check out how much UK legislation comes from the EU, since it seems to be a heavily-disputed point .

UKIP leader Nigel Farage, in his hugely-enjoyable MN webchat, claimed it was 74%; his more exuberant colleague Daniel Hannan puts it at 84%. David Cameron, before he became PM, reckoned that the figure was nearer 50%.

At the other end of the scale, the House of Commons Library, which is politically neutral, came up with a figure of 9.1%. Which seems rather low.

The problem is that there?s no accepted base standard. UKIP appears to have got its figures from an analysis by the German govt, which has a very different legislative system from the UK. Cameron was talking about both laws and regulations which affect UK businesses; the House of Commons Library considered only ?statutory instruments? - legislation from the EU which passes into UK law by default, without being put before parliament; (although since statutory instruments make up the bulk of all UK legislation, not only the EU-driven stuff, that's potentially not unreasonable). In May 2009, a report by the British Chamber of Commerce found that the EU accounted for around 20 per cent of regulatory legislation in Britain in 2008-09.

Soooo. EU-UK legislative relationship status: It?s Complicated.

This page gives a snapshot of what other EU states reckon the percentage of their national legislation is EU-derived: 6.3 percent according to the Swedish parliament, 12 percent according to the Finnish parliament. The Lithuanians say it's between 12% and 19%.

And the House of Commons Library recently put out a much more comprehensive study of the percentage of UK laws that originate from the EU, and they now reckon on approximately 15%.

Enjoy !

I think that's decided by their party MmeLindt - but I'll find out. I agree it seems rather, um, counterintuitive that Godfrey Bloom is on the WRGE committee

Forster I think that's a really interesting proposal and not one which I've heard before. I'll try and explore further when I'm there. Thanks.