Barking and Dagenham Borough Liberal Democrats

Sarah's bulletin: 29 January 2010

Visiting Bosnia

This week I write to you from Sarajevo in Bosnia & Hercegovina, where I'm leading a small delegation of 5 MEPS - including 3 former national ministers - from the ALDE (European Liberals and Democrats) group on a fact-finding mission.

Although I'm no longer a member of the European Parliament's South-East Europe delegation - since my main external job is as vicechair of the US delegation - I continue my long-standing interest in the Balkans generally and specifically in Bosnia, which is facing many challenges. I'm ALDE group 'shadow rapporteur' on Bosnia for the EP Foreign Affairs committee.

As you know, Paddy Ashdown is the former 'High Representative' in Bosnia of the international community, having taken a strong interest from the early 1990s when he was our party leader and tried to get the West to help stop Milosevic's war. At the EP hearing of the new enlargement commissioner-designate Stefan Fule I pressed him to take effective action in regard to the worsening political crisis in Bosnia. I was very involved in the successful effort last autumn to keep the prospect of visa-free travel to the Schengen zone (not UK) for Bosnian citizens high on the agenda; I'm very encouraged with progress the Bosnian authorities are making towards meeting EU conditions for that, so it hopefully will be in place by July 1st. It shows that EU incentives plus strict criteria can deliver effective outcomes.

Bosnia's broadly federal but over-complicated structure is the result of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which represents its constitution. But there are far too many not very effective tiers of representation which talk and cost too much but don't deliver results; in some areas bureaucracy and administration costs 75% of the public budget leaving only one-quarter for actual services like schools and hospitals!

Changes are needed, not least to respect human rights, liberate people from the straightjacket of 'ethnic' interest groups and get local ownership of decisions. Reform is also vital to equip the country with efficient institutions, including a state or central government with adequate powers compared to the 2 entities (one Serb, the other Croat-Bosniak) to implement EU laws as it makes its way to EU accession.

The economy is in a dire state, with sky-high unemployment, but what firms are going to invest here when haggling over, for instance, the route of a new highway is delaying the receipt of €2 biillion on World and European Bank money, not to speak of widespread corruption. Until reform happens it is difficult to see Bosnia shedding its protectorate status. This country of wonderful, talented people deserves a lot better from its politicians, who, as one perceptive person remarked to me, cast around for someone else to blame since they 'prefer finding culprits to finding solutions'.

Finding better politicians was one aspect of our visit to Sarajevo since besides meeting international and EU officials and elected representatives of the Croat-Bosniak Federation and the state levels, we also held a press conference with our sister party here, the Liberal Democratic Party of BiH (Liberalna demokratska stranka) who are very small and yet to get an MP. For the first time ever - and probably the last! - I led the early-evening national TV news; OK, it was in Bosnia not Britain, but it counts doesn't it?! Our Bosnian Liberal friends were delighted. They hope to make a breakthrough into Parliament and later at dinner I gave them the Rennard-approved message on targeting!

Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance day, which always serves as a reminder that despite our constant vows to never let such a crime happen again, mass killing, even genocide, and rape persist all over the world, and we are not doing enough to stop it. One persistent desire of many of us who want a stronger and more coherent EU is to equip it for a decisive role in prevention of human rights outrages and assisting efficiently as well as generously in humanitarian disasters.

Andrew Symeou denied bail for third time

This week we learnt that my constituent, Andrew Symeou, has been denied bail for the third time while he awaits trial in a Greek prison. Andrew was extradited to Greece using a European Arrest Warrant last July on a manslaughter charge. As you may remember from my previous bulletins, the case against him is flawed because it is seems to be based on mistaken identity, conflicting evidence and a brutal intimidation of witnesses. I reacted by saying that the Greek judges were not making any sense: first they deny him bail because he is a foreigner, now because he may commit a crime. He still has no trial date, raising suspicion of misuse of the European Arrest Warrant which is only meant to be used to bring suspects for prosecution. Shockingly too, the court's decision was only delivered to Andrew by fax, in Greek, and a prison guard had to tell Andrew what it meant - hardly a professional way to do things. There needs to be justice in individual cases like Andrew's, and a general strengthening of criminal justice standards and defence rights in Europe.

Body scanners: preserving privacy and modesty

On Monday I wrote a piece for the Guardian's civil liberties blog 'Liberty Central' about the privacy implications of 'naked' body scanners. I highlighted that, as has been shown to be the case in America, these digital 'strip search' machines that produce pretty explicit images of passengers retain the capability to store the pictures and transfer them on to other computers and the internet, making pledges of immediate deletion of dubious reliability. It seems that ensuring the scanners are not even physically capable of retaining the images is the only way of guaranteeing that naked outlines of celebrities or children do not find their way on to the internet or TV.

In addition, passengers must always be offered an alternative such as a pat down search, unlike the government's intention of forcing everyone to have a scan. This announcement was ironically made close to European Data Protection Day yesterday (Thursday), a timely reminder of the ever multiplying threats to our privacy and the safety of our personal data. Body scanners, DNA databases, CCTV, passenger data, ID cards, internet search engines... in almost every walk of life, the private seems to be becoming less and less private.

See here for more information about data protection day, and the Information Commissioner's worthy campaign for young people and online privacy. But while the Information Commissioner has stronger powers now thanks to Brussels' insistence, he still lacks sufficient resources to deal with the massive proliferation of threats to our privacy.

African elephant ivory trading

It now appears that Tanzania and Zambia want to re-classify their elephant populations under the Convention for the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) in order to be allowed to sell ivory products. I have submitted a parliamentary question to the Commission asking if the EU will join the African Elephant Coalition of other African nations in opposing this request and backing a true moratorium on all ivory trade, in order to try and protect endangered elephants.

Best regards from Banja Luka,

Sarah Ludford