EU: The European Parliament is about more than what happens in the chamber. Unlike many national assemblies, there is a laissez-faire attitude to ancillary or fringe events. At any given plenary session in Strasbourg there is a wide variety to choose from, in the "off-Broadway" category.
This week, for example, president Mikheil Saakashvili gave the first-ever address to the parliament by a Georgian head of state. But by way of added value, MEPs were invited to a performance of the Georgian State Dance Company, entitled The Fire of Georgian Dance. Later that day, there was a reception where the "Wine of Freedom" from Georgia was dispensed.
Should the exciting combination of wine and dance from the Caucasus prove too much for them, MEPs could cool off at a seminar on Sustainable Hunting, or how to bag big (and small) game without wiping out the species.
Alternatively, there was a public hearing, sponsored by the Greens, entitled Une Injustice Oubliée (A Forgotten Injustice) which marked the 60th anniversary of the deportation of tens of thousands of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia in 1946/47.
That tragic population shift has indeed been largely forgotten, unlike the near-simultaneous removal or flight of the Palestinians from their native soil in 1948 when the state of Israel was founded.
The fall-out from what Arabs call the naqba (catastrophe) are still very much with us and were the subject of another event in the margins of the Parliament entitled "Witness in Gaza" where MEPs reported on a visit to the region and a documentary was shown, entitled Gaza: Inexplicable Wounds and New Weapons.
This had an impact inside the chamber, with Fianna Fáil's Eoin Ryan telling his colleagues how he had attended this event and "was shocked at what I saw and heard, the sheer brutality that has been inflicted on Palestinian civilians". But the other side of the argument was available at another event, a dinner organised by the European Jewish Congress in the parliament's "Winston Churchill Building" with Israeli minister Ronnie Bar-On as guest-speaker.
With so much going on in the margins, one might well ask how MEPs can concentrate on their proper business as legislators. But they found time to approve the once-controversial services directive, which ruffled so many feathers when produced by Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein in January 2004.
It was left to his successor, Charlie McCreevy, to steer the directive onto the statute book. Conciliation might not be the Kildareman's most obvious skill, but he succeeded in getting it through the parliament this week, and what critics originally condemned as "The Frankenstein Directive" now has only one more hurdle to leap, at the Council of Ministers.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael MEP and long-time critic of Ireland's neutrality policy Gay Mitchell was pleased that the parliament was considering a report by a German member, Karl Von Wogau, which recommends closer defence and security co-operation inside the European Union, as distinct from external action which is already carried out on a joint basis.
Also feeling happy were the manufacturers of mercury barometers, who lobbied successfully to secure an exemption from a ban on mercury in draft legislation intended to phase out the use of this highly-toxic chemical on environmental and health grounds.
A substantial majority voted to exempt barometers from the ban, contrary to a previous agreement between MEPs from the four biggest political groups in the parliament that mercury should be banned, without exception, in all measuring devices on sale to the public. The member states will now review the legislation and vote on whether to pass it.
If the member states at European Council level stick to their guns and insist on the barometer ban, it will come back to the parliament for a second reading next year and there would have to be an absolute majority of the 732 members to uphold the exemption.
It was a surprise move which showed that nothing can be taken for granted where politicians are concerned.