Thank you very much for the invitation to speak at this important conference. I believe that the more contact there is between our parties and our countries, the more effectively we can progress our common agenda for a different kind of Europe. I am honoured to have been recently elected as the President of the European Free Alliance Group in the European Parliament, following the excellent work done by Nelly Maes and Ian Hudghton. It is a very exciting time to be leading our group.

We have seven members in the European Parliament from Wales, Scotland, Flanders, Latvia, Catalunya and Corsica. We work in a joint group with the Green parties in Europe and some others, as we have done very successfully for the past ten years. The group is the fourth largest in the parliament with 56 members. Within the group we work to progress a radical green programme and we have had significant influence on the work of the parliament.

We are meeting here just a week before the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland is expected to vote yes this time. But there was no clearer demonstration of the influence small independent countries can exercise within the EU than the Irish no vote last year. They now hold the key to further EU developments and enlargement.

EFA works closely with the Greens on political strategy within the parliament generally. But we have also begun to formulate our own distinctive programme and strategy.

That strategy is based on a number of aims. Firstly, we want to give the European Free Alliance itself a profile with in the EU, thus promoting the vision of a Europe of the Peoples and the vital role that all countries and regions can play in shaping a better Europe. This is not new, of course. It is something that EFA parties represented in the EP have done since the eighties. It has had notable successes. EFA pressure helped to put “regionalism” on the agenda which in turn led to the establishment of the Committee of the Regions in 1994. This we welcomed and were eager to participate in. But the Committee has not developed as we envisaged – largely because it is Member State based rather than “regionally” based. Because of the appointment system, our EFA parties have had few representatives on the committee and we have been unable to form a distinctive political group – this in the body in which in some ways we should have found a natural home! The committee is practically invisible on an EU level which led us to call, in our evidence to the Constitution on the Future of Europe, for its reform or abolition. This is an issue we are still discussing and we hope to make some concrete proposals on reform.

In the new parliament we have held some early discussions on our political strategy for this term to raise EFA's profile. We looked at the opportunities presented by the presidencies of the EU next year. For the first six months Spain hold the presidency and we have decided to organise a seminar or hearing on language rights during the Spanish presidency. This is an area where our EFA parties have campaigned successfully. Following the Irish Presidency announcement to make Gaelic an official EU language, the Spanish government bowed to pressure to apply for official status for Basque, Galician and Catalan. The result was the adoption of a new language status within the EU for languages which are recognised as official within their member states but will not become full official languages – what is known as co-official status. In Wales, Plaid Cymru campaigned hard for the UK government to apply for co-official status for Welsh, and we eventually secured that last year. No-one was more delighted than myself when our Plaid Cymru Heritage Minister became the first to speak Welsh in the Council of Ministers last December. Scottish Gaelic has the same status. We will have to keep working on the parliament to improve its rules governing co-official languages as they are more restrictive than those of the Commission or the Council. And we believe that the EU should pay the translation costs which presently are borne by the member states, or in our case, the Assembly.

Within our EFA group we also work with MEPs who are working for equality for language speaking communities in their member states, such as Hungarian in Romania and Russian in Latvia. These are not necessarily campaigns for recognition of those languages in the EU but for action to defend the rights of those language groups and to prevent discrimination against them. It is wider issue of human rights and education policies citizenship. We will be taking a delegation to Latvia and Estonia next year with our Latvian member Tatjana Zdanoka to examine the situation in those countries and look at what support we can provide.

We have also secured the support of the Greens/EFA group for an intergroup (cross party group) on minority languages.

In the context of our proposed seminar we will address all those issues. We see languages as an integral element of the diversity and sustainability which the EU claims to promote and we need to be constantly reminding them of this. It was depressing to hear the answer of the new EP President to our questions on promoting languages. Jerzy Buzek of Poland stated that he supported the right of people to use minority languages within their own regions but not in the EU. When I put similar questions to Commission President Barroso I got a very vague statement of support for minority languages but no commitment to improve their status.

That will be one of our activities in 2010 and one in which I know our EFA sister parties will want to participate.

Belgium will take over the EU Presidency from Spain in June. Given the constitutional situation in Belgium and the way in which the presidency responsibilities will be shared between Flanders and Wallonia, we felt this would be an opportune time to organise a major conference to discuss independence. The national conversation in Scotland is preparing the ground for a referendum on independence in 2010 and in Wales we have a convention carrying out a similar task in the run-up to our referendum on parliamentary powers for the Assembly before 2011. In Catalonia there have been local referenda on independence. So the debate and the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is taking place against the backdrop of a whole series of discussions on constitutional change in the member states – something which President Barroso has been unwilling to recognise in his vision of how the EU will develop in the next five years.

There are many institutional issues that we want to address, for example, proposals for the direct participation of countries and regions with constitutional powers in the decision making process by splitting the vote in the Council of Ministers; direct access for constitutional regions to the European Court of Justice as well as the composition and role of the Committee of the Regions. We want to develop the groundbreaking work done by our late colleague Professor Neil MacCormick when he represented EFA on the Convention on the Future of Europe, and in particular the concept of internal enlargement, whereby nations which are currently members of the EU as part of existing member states could, on achieving independence, become members in their own right on meeting the criteria similar to those governing the acceptance of candidate countries.

I believe this is a very exciting proposal which I hope will attract major attention and will both support and inspire all our EFA parties.

And I see this is a major role for the EFA group in the European Parliament too. Since the first members were elected in the 1980’s, EFA MEPs have represented all the parties, not just our own. We in Plaid Cymru benefitted hugely from the work done by MEPs from Flanders, Corsica, Sardinia, the Basque Country and Catalunya in the long years when we had little hope of an MEP of our own. We could justly say that we had representatives fighting for us in Europe and I want to continue that solidarity which has made EFA a real force in European politics. Now that we have EFA, the political party, that work has become easier for us in the parliamentary group. But it is a responsibility we are very aware of. And now we can contribute to and benefit from the work of the Maurits Coppieters Foundation in pursuing our shared agenda with new academic backing.

The right to self-determination is an issue that goes beyond EU borders, of course. Many of our MEP have been, and will continue to be active in supporting the rights of people in Palestine, in Tibet, in Western Sahara and with the Kurdish people in Turkey and Iraq. We will continue with this international dimension of our work, making more political contacts and possibly organising EFA missions.

These are some of the priorities we have set ourselves. In terms of parliamentary business, as well as working in our respective committees and in the Greens/EFA group, we have set up a working group on the Green New Deal to address specific elements of that proposal – which we support – but which have certain implications for our parties, particularly those in government – such as levels of corporation tax. On the defining issue of contemporary politics, climate change, we work closely with the Greens pushing for the most radical EU position possible in the run up to the Copenhagen summit. At the same time we want to promote the ambitious policies of many of our parties in government across Europe which often go much further than member state governments in fighting climate change. This is why we want to promote the Edinburgh group which brings together government ministers from EFA parties to agree common positions and establish ongoing co-operation. It is very important that we continue working together, not only for the benefit of our cultures and languages but also for the economies and financial stability of each of our nations.

If – when – the Lisbon Treaty is adopted, we will have to think about how we respond to the appointment of the new President of the European Union and the new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, as well as ensuring that the new measures on subsidiarity really include levels below that of the member state government.

So our political strategy is twofold, to set a distinctive EFA agenda to promote our aims in terms on constitutional and linguistic rights, and to work with the Greens on EU reform, social reform, sustainable development, equality, fair trade and aid, peace and disarmament, economy and climate change.

We will work within the EU institutions by securing positions for our EFA members whenever possible e.g Alyn Smith MEP on the Temporary Committee on the Financial Crisis and Oriol Junqueras MEP, on the Intergroup on minorities; and we will directly lobby the Commission and President of the Parliament on issues that directly affect our own constituencies, such as agriculture and funding. We will also work outside the EU structure with our own sister parties, NGO's and others to promote, democracy, equality and justice. And we will use the resources available to us to involve as wide a range of groups and peoples as possible in the debate on the future of Europe.

We have set ourselves an ambitious programme for a group of just seven MEP's. But it is up to us to be what Winnie Ewing SNP called "not just the dreamers of dreams but the movers and shakers". We will keep shaking this Europe of the member states until the real peoples can be seen and heard - until we can begin to build a real Europe of the Peoples.

Jill Evans MEP
Plaid Cymru