Welcome to the March edition of my Brussels Briefing. It's been another busy month in the European Parliament with the Common Fisheries Policy reform and livestock transportation high on the agenda.

I have also been following this month's Iraqi election with much interest. While I congratulate the courage of the Iraqi people who came out to exercise their democratic right to vote in significant numbers, despite bomb and mortar attacks which killed 56 and injured 140 people, nevertheless it is shameful that factions within Iraq still seek to undermine and devalue the whole electoral process through threats of violence, intimidation, blackmail, bribery and fraud.

This week I presented a large dossier of evidence of election fraud to a meeting of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq in the European Parliament. I gained the support of the delegation and have sent a copy of the dossier to Baroness Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament. It is time for Iraq to stand on its own feet and join the democratic nations of the world. Violence, corruption and fraud have no place in a modern democracy. Governments should be elected on their merits and not through a process of ballot rigging and cheating.

With best wishes,

Struan Stevenson MEP

Fish discards have been a topical and controversial issue for many years. In Europe over one million tonnes of healthy fish are dumped,dead, back into the sea. It's scandalous and something that needs to change. 

Speaking in the European Parliament last week I suggested that discards offer the ideal opportunity to use immature or out-of-quota fish for processing into fishmeal and fish oil, avoiding the horrendous waste and environmental pollution involved in their wanton dumping overboard.

The advantages of feeding fishmeal and fish oil to farm animals have been known for around two thousand years. Even the ancient Romans knew that fishmeal contains highly digestible protein, essential fatty acids, as well as a number of important minerals.

As well as providing the animals concerned with an excellent diet, the highly unsaturated fatty acids in the fishmeal, often referred to as Omega 3s, ensure that the finished food products have health benefits for consumers.

The processing sector has already stated its willingness to compensate fishermen for over-quota fish at a rate that was not so attractive it would encourage targeting of particular species, but attractive enough to discourage dumping.

The fishmeal and fish oil industry directly employs 30,000 people throughout the EU, providing products widely used in fish farming and other sectors.

At the start of March I hosted a special meeting in Wick to seek the views and opinions of Scottish farmers and hauliers on the issue of animal transportation.

Not surprisingly there was unanimous opposition to more red tape from Brussels with local farmers calling for enforcement of current regulations rather than more regulation.

The European Commission is proposing new regulations covering the transport of livestock for slaughter, even though the current rules only came into force in 2007. On the last occasion, I successfully fought Scotland’s corner, winning important ‘derogations’, or exemptions, for farmers in remote parts of Scotland. The Commission had wanted to impose an eight-hour travel time limit – even though the ferry from Shetland to Aberdeen takes at least 14 hours.

But while Scottish firms have played by the rules and invested in expensive new vehicles to ensure animals are transported humanely, other EU states have shown a flagrant disregard.

Read more

I was appalled to discover that tens of thousands of our country's most familiar migratory birds are being trapped and massacred every spring in Malta.

These birds, including swifts, swallows, house martins and cuckoos, which migrate from Scotland to North Africa every autumn, stop off to rest in Malta during their long return journey to our shores. But on Malta, more than 12,000 hunters are lying in wait every spring, ready to gun them down in their thousands for sport.

I have called for the European Commission to take urgent action to ensure EU laws are upheld against spring hunting of birds. Unless we protect the migratory paths over the Mediterranean, conservation efforts to protect bird life in Scotland will be in vain. This is an attack on Scotland’s biodiversity which cannot be allowed to continue.