It was three weeks ago that the ALDE Party Council met in Vienna, with nothing in particular in the agenda, but a lot of anticipation for the European elections to come. You see, for most of our European sister parties, the FDP excepted, the prospects were not so as troubling. The Dutch were optimistic, as were the Danes, most other parties expected little change in terms of the number of MEPs, and talk was of the threat of extremists to the future working of the European Parliament.
Naturally, as a directly elected member of our Party's delegation, I was keen to contribute, and so after a pleasant stroll across Vienna, I headed for the policy working group. I was late, but got there in time for the only meaningful discussion, joining David Simmons in a successful effort to bring together the disparate views of D66 and VVD (Netherlands), the FDP, Italia dei Valori and the Liberal Democrats into a stance that we could all endorse.
Lunchtime saw a fringe meeting entitled "Innovation for competitiveness and sustainable growth: towards new business models?" which, at rather short notice, Ros had been asked to chair, and it was interesting, as speakers talked about how what could and might be done to encourage the rather smarter economy that Europe will need in the future.
But we then moved onto the serious business of Council, except that there wasn't that much, given how much depends on the election results. How influential will liberals be? How many will there be? Who will be the next President of the European Commission? Indeed, the only real decision taken was to accept the membership application from our hosts, NEOS - the new Austria, who were hopeful of success in their efforts to bring Austrian liberalism back to the European Parliament. In fact, the meeting ended so early that we had rather a lot of time to kill before the evening rally to launch NEOS's campaign.
I suspect that the next meeting, on 13 June, in Brussels, might be more interesting...
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