MEP Evidence Session
Item 2 is our videoconference with Brussels. Can Struan Stevenson hear us all right? Good morning.
Struan Stevenson MEP (European Parliament)
Good morning. Yes, I can hear you very well. Are you picking up what I am saying?
Yes, we are.
I welcome you to the meeting. You will probably be aware that we had a videoconference with Ian Hudghton and Catherine Stihler in November. We are developing that initiative a little bit further. Obviously, the committee is keen to undertake more post-Lisbon treaty engagement. You MEPs must be popular people these days with the extension of competences following the implementation of the new treaty. I gather that everybody wants to speak to you.
Immediately following this videoconference, I have a videoconference with the six Highlands and Islands councils, so I think that I will be sitting in this videoconference room for the next hour and a half.
You are a popular person. As you have another videoconference and are running to a tight timescale, we will try to keep the discussion on time.
I understand that you will make some opening remarks. I will then invite committee members to comment, ask questions or pick your brains a little bit. Over to you.
Thank you for giving me this helpful opportunity to speak to you. The opportunity clearly cuts down the time that would otherwise be necessary if committee members had to travel to Brussels, and it cuts costs, which is an imperative now.
I was informed that members want to discuss the Lisbon treaty and its impact on how we do our work, and the Calman commission proposals and how they affect relations with the EU.
There are key issues relating to the Lisbon treaty that we need to be aware of. There has been a substantial change in the values and citizenship of all of us. The 500 million citizens of the EU are now no longer simply symbolic citizens of the EU; they have become proper, real EU citizens with all the rights, duties and responsibilities that that entails. Likewise, the 27 member states have taken on the role of members of a multinational federation, rather like the 50 federal states of the United States of America. In turn, the Council of Prime Ministers and Presidents has become an institution of the EU under the Lisbon treaty, and the decisions that it takes are no longer peculiar to that body; they are now subject to review by the European Court of Justice. In effect, the European Council has become the Cabinet Government of the post-Lisbon union. Ministers now have a role in representing the union to their member states as well as in representing their member states to the union. However, I am not sure whether many Prime Ministers and Presidents in the EU understand that they have that new responsibility and role to undertake.
10:45
Famously—although he does not remember doing so—Henry Kissinger once said, “Who do you phone if you want to speak to Europe?” The Lisbon treaty was supposed to clarify that by providing us with a new President of the Council, the former Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy. In fact, we now have more Presidents in Europe than you could shake a stick at. Herman Van Rompuy is President of the European Council, José Manuel Barroso is President of the European Commission and Jerzy Buzek is President of the European Parliament. It appears that we still have the rotating presidency, which is with Spain until the end of June. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is the rotating President of the Council of Ministers. Therefore, we have four Presidents to telephone if we want to speak to Europe.
Under the Lisbon treaty, we also have a new High Representative for Foreign Affairs, the British commissioner Cathy Ashton. She has taken on a very important role. In fact, she has three different jobs. She is senior vice-president of the European Commission; she chairs the foreign affairs council of ministers; and she is the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. In that role, she is in charge of a massive organisation. She is in charge of thousands of ambassadors and embassy staff right across the globe in virtually every country of the world, and of the EU’s common foreign and security policy, which gives her the ability to involve the European Union in anti-terrorist activities, resolving conflicts, and, strangely enough, peace making, which is military-speak for waging war. Therefore, she is a very powerful lady.
The Lisbon treaty talks about the need for mutual assistance under the common foreign and security policy should any of the 27 member states be attacked. A member state has the right to call in mutual assistance from all the other member states. That is a mirror image of article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which calls for mutual assistance among all North Atlantic Treaty Organization members. Of course, some people have criticised the EU for trying to replicate NATO’s work and, in so doing, undermining that work.
We are having difficulties hearing you, Struan. There is a little technical problem with receiving some of what you are saying. I do not know whether problems are being caused when you speak close to the microphone, but we are not picking up everything that you are saying. Perhaps you could try to speak a little further back from the microphone.
I am a wee bit further away from it. Is that better?
Yes.
Do you want me to repeat some of what I said?
No. I think that we picked up most of it. There were problems when you leaned too close to the microphone.
Okay.
The committee should be aware of the important issue of the subsidiarity principle. I do not know whether members have discussed that before. The Lisbon treaty contains a clear statutory right in respect of consultation with member states, which means that every time the European Commission publishes a legislative proposal, it must be sent to all 27 member states. The member states are given eight weeks from the day of publication to send a reasoned opinion to the European Commission on the draft legislative proposal. That enshrines in statutory and primary law for the first time the right of subsidiarity and the right of consultation, and it means that the EU institutions—the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission—cannot pass any law unless consultation has taken place. If any member state raises a challenge and questions whether it was properly consulted under that statute, the matter will immediately go to the European Court of Justice for conciliation and a decision.
In Scotland, we must work out how we can make that system work to our benefit. The timescale of eight weeks is extremely short. One assumes that, when the Commission produces a draft legislative proposal, it will be sent to Whitehall. If it is on an agriculture issue, such as the reform of the CAP budget, it will go to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which will then ask the agriculture minister and probably the agriculture committee in the House of Commons to consider the proposal. DEFRA will, one would hope, simultaneously send the proposal to the Scottish Government, which in turn will ask the European and External Relations Committee and the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee for their input. By the time that all that has been undertaken, the eight weeks will almost have been exhausted, which leaves no time at all for consulting stakeholders and going out and speaking to people such as the National Farmers Union, farmers, consumers and trade unions.
We must figure out a way of dealing with that. The civil servants will have to look over the horizon to spot the major draft legislative proposals that are in the pipeline. Earlier, Ian Duncan talked to the committee about the Commission’s future work programme. The committee will have to look at what is coming in the next six to 12 months and start the consultation with stakeholders at that point so that, when the proposals land on the Scottish Government’s desk, the committee can immediately input its consultation results and reasoned opinion and have those ready to be sent back to Whitehall for submission to the European Commission. That is extremely important.
All the committees in the European Parliament are now fully legislative, including the Committee on Fisheries, on which I sit, and the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. Before the Lisbon treaty, they were only consultative, but now every aspect of the European Parliament is fully legislative. We work in trialogue with the Council and the Commission. Under the subsidiarity principle, we will have to deal with the dossier of submissions from all 27 member states before we arrive at a conclusion on any issue. Inevitably, that will slow down the work of the committees in Brussels, which might be a good thing because, if members of the Scottish Parliament have not had adequate time during the eight weeks of the mandatory consultation period, you will have a longer period to input your views to members of the European Parliament’s committees.
On that point, I should say that we have apologies this morning from my colleague George Lyon, who sits on the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. He is dealing with 700 amendments to his report on the reform of the CAP with all the shadow rapporteurs from the various political groups. A crucial vote on his report is coming up shortly, which is why he could not be here this morning and why you have only me, I am sorry to say.
On key issues such as the EU energy strategy, financial services regulation, reform of the research budget and, of course, CAP and CFP reform, which Ian Duncan mentioned, there is a lot going on. There is also a consultation document out from Mr Barroso on a new strategy for the single market. That considers the four conflicting approaches to the running and organisation of the single market in the EU, which are based on member state clusters. There are the continental social market economy countries, which include France and Germany; the Anglo-Saxon countries, including Britain; the central and east European countries, which are the recent accession states; and the Nordic countries. All four of those clusters have different strategies for operating in the single market, all of which are contrasting and fight against one another.
There is a view that we need to relaunch the single market to stabilise the euro. At a time when we have 9.9 per cent unemployment in Europe—with 23 million European citizens unemployed—that is clearly an important issue. The Commission is considering initiatives to support SMEs, to set up a digital single market and to reap the full benefit of the single market for goods and services. The Commission wants to improve labour mobility around the geographical areas of the EU and to establish a physical infrastructure for the single market. All those issues are of vital importance for Scotland, as are the issues that Ian Duncan talked to the committee about on CFP and CAP reform, in which I am closely involved.
That is enough from me. I will be delighted to answer any questions that the committee might have.
Thanks very much, Struan—that was interesting.
It might be worth saying a few words about what the committee has been doing recently on some of those issues. We have had a fairly long inquiry into Lisbon in which we have taken evidence from a range of Scottish stakeholders, including participants, the voluntary sector and academics, on how we can better scrutinise European legislation and put in place a process in the Scottish Parliament to ensure that we pick up on subsidiarity issues and key priorities. We will have several ideas in our report, which we will discuss later in today’s agenda, but I will not be revealing any secrets if I tell you about some of the challenges that we feel that we face.
One is on engagement with the Parliament’s subject committees, which is an important role for us. We are considering looking in more detail at the European Commission work programme. Just a few weeks ago, we devoted committee time in the Parliament to a debate on that work programme. The idea was to give the Parliament’s subject committees an opportunity to key in on some of the priorities. That takes on board the points that you made that leaving issues until the eight-week period is almost too late and that we need to take a long forward look. We feel that we have an advantage because the Commission work programme will now cover a four or five-year span, which is the entire Commission term, whereas in the past we have had to consider annual work programmes. That might enable us to take a longer look.
We are using the European Commission work programme and we are trying to use parliamentary time to raise the profile of issues in the Parliament’s subject committees. We seek to have greater engagement with Scottish MEPs and we recognise the importance of connecting with European Parliament committees, which you mentioned. We realise that all the Parliament’s subject committees need to talk to rapporteurs and committee conveners in the European Parliament. We are considering many of the areas that you have mentioned. I hope that we are on the right track with some of our suggestions.
How can we make best use of our Scottish MEPs? The move to more frequent videoconferencing is good, but do you have any other suggestions? I know that you made a submission to the Calman commission about MEPs being members of the European and External Relations Committee. Will you comment on that? There are a range of views on that proposal among Scottish MEPs, given the practical difficulties that it could pose. Even when arranging videoconferences we recognise the huge pressure on members’ time. It can take us two or three months sometimes to programme a slot in the diary for a videoconference.
I attend meetings of the European elected members information liaison and exchange network. We tend to arrange them during white week—constituency week—but, even then, we are probably doing quite well to get one MEP out of six to come along. That is in no way a criticism; it is simply a reflection of the fact that many members cover the whole of Scotland for their political party. There are huge pressures on your time during constituency week. It is important not to set up a system that could be geared to fail. Do you have any comments to make on that?
11:00
Yes—I was going to discuss the Calman recommendations later, but this is a good opportunity to do so. As you said, I gave evidence to the Calman commission, which in its report endorsed what I recommended. My colleague Alyn Smith MEP took that even further with his submission. I think that he sent a letter to the Presiding Officer only last week—I am not sure whether you are aware of its contents yet—in which he talks about having a more integrated system between MSPs and MEPs after the Holyrood elections next year. He suggests replacing the European and External Relations Committee with a special joint committee comprising the deputy conveners of all the subject committees and Scottish MEPs. That would give MSPs a direct role in Brussels and MEPs a direct role in Holyrood. According to his strategy, that would ensure that we improve integration and that we know exactly what is happening, especially now that the Lisbon treaty is having such a considerable legislative impact on the work that we do as MEPs.
My suggestions were more along the lines of what happens in the German Länder. Our German colleagues are automatically members of the external relations and European affairs committees of each region in Germany. They hold their meetings on a Monday morning or a Monday lunch time, or in the late afternoon or evening on Thursdays, to allow the MEPs to travel back and forward from Brussels to attend. The MEPs attend in an ex officio, observer capacity, of course, as they are not elected to serve in those regional Parliaments. I recommend that the same should apply if MEPs become involved in the work of your committee—I suggest that they do so on an ex officio basis.
On that basis, we could come to your meetings and tell you directly about the work that is going on and the forward programme. We could also get direct feedback from you about what you want us to say and do when we go to Brussels. That level of communication could prove important. Whether you agree with my idea or wish to go even further and adopt Alyn Smith’s proposal is a matter for further discussion, but I think that we should have a new system in place after the Holyrood elections next year.
This is not particularly the fault of anyone, but the EMILE system has, frankly, not been terribly satisfactory. I do not think that it does very useful work in scrutinising the input from the UK Government or the Scottish Government into EU legislation. We need reform. I would be happy enough to go along with the Calman proposals, but if you want something more radical, I am open to persuasion.
One of EMILE’s functions was horizon scanning, giving MEPs the opportunity to come to the Parliament, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Government to highlight the big issues on the horizon that people need to be alert to. It has not worked, to be honest, and one of the reasons for that is the pressure on people’s time. I add that caveat to any proposals for setting up a system that depends on such an exchange.
I now bring in committee colleagues.
Good morning, Struan. It is always nice to listen to your overarching views on such matters.
I am interested in your thought that MEPs might regularly take part in this committee’s deliberations. Whether we go as far as Alyn Smith’s suggestion is open to debate. Personally, I would welcome MEPs’ input at our meetings.
Given your position as a member of the Committee on Fisheries, it will not come as any surprise to you that the couple of questions that I wish to put are on fisheries matters. I do not know whether you heard the question that I put to Ian Duncan earlier, but we understand that the proposed reform of the common fisheries policy contains a suggestion that fishing be judged on a more local basis, with a distinction made between smaller, local fleets and industrial fishing when it comes to allocating quotas. Can you tell us any more about those proposals?
My specific point to Ian Duncan was that, in the north of Scotland, and particularly in places such as Fraserburgh and Peterhead, people regard fishing as a diverse sector, ranging from large pelagic vessels to under-10m and non-aligned vessels. Would the proposals designate the pelagic vessels as industrial fishery vessels?
Before you answer that, Struan, I acknowledge that we have only seven minutes before you have to go to your next videoconference. I suggest that we take questions from other members now. If you could respond to them together, that might save a little time.
Good morning, Struan. I have found your contribution very informative. My question is on the involvement of MEPs with the Scottish Parliament and MSPs, and how that relates to the eight-week timescale that we have been discussing. If MEPs and the Scottish Parliament were more involved with each other’s work, would that make it easier to reply within that eight-week timescale? If the Scottish Parliament received the documents but did not have time to respond to concerns that were raised, would those concerns then go to the Westminster Parliament, which would raise them with Europe, with matters possibly going to the European Court of Justice? Is it just the Westminster Parliament that is able to do that?
As no other members have questions, I ask Struan Stevenson to respond.
Thank you for those questions.
On the CFP, there will be an emphasis on giving more rights to and ensuring fair play for under-10m inshore fisheries. There is a view that they have been discriminated against. Mrs Damanaki, who has emphasised that point clearly, comes from Crete—she is an islander, she is well aware of fisheries issues, she has picked up her new brief very quickly and I think that she is very good as the Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
On the future of total allowable catches and quotas, we are having a major debate on international tradeable rights. Mrs Damanaki has said several times that she does not favour ITRs being available on a Europe-wide basis
We in Scotland have said that ITRs would be terribly damaging for our fishery, because the wealthy and large multinational fishing companies, most of which are based in Spain, would quickly come into the North Sea and buy up all the fishing rights that they could from undoubtedly willing sellers—many skippers would be willing to sell their licences and their quotas. Once those companies had bought the rights and were fishing in the North Sea, they would be under no obligation to land their catch in Fraserburgh, Peterhead or Lerwick—in fact, they would probably take it back to Vigo in Spain. We would lose not only thousands of jobs at sea but tens of thousands of jobs on land.
EU-wide ITRs would pose a great risk for the future management of our fishery. We have emphasised that we want a system that retains relative stability and enshrines traditional fishing rights. Okay, the TAC records are out of date and we must modernise that system, but our traditional rights to catch fish in our British waters must be respected and retained.
Different ways of achieving that aim are being considered. In a mixed fishery such as the white-fish sector in the North Sea, we might go for an effort-only—a days-at-sea-only—system. In effect, quotas and TACs would be abolished, and fishermen would have days at sea only. If people had invested heavily in buying quota, that would be rolled over into a financial right in the new days-at-sea allocation. That would become a tradeable commodity, too.
It is generally accepted that the pelagic fishery is a clean fishery that works well, so the present system would probably not be altered. The same applies to the cod fishery in the Baltic Sea, for instance, which is also a clean fishery. Instead of changing the system of TACs and quotas there, TACs and quotas might be retained for cod in the Baltic but abolished for cod and other white fish in the North Sea.
We are considering all such issues. We are examining how stakeholders can be involved, to ensure that fishermen and scientists in the regions are more involved in day-to-day decision making. Mrs Damanaki is very much in favour of that, but she tells us that she is coming up against strong legal advice in the European Commission that devolving management responsibility out of Brussels and down to the regions would be a breach of the treaty, because Brussels has primary responsibility for implementing the treaties. The common fisheries policy is one of the EU’s three common policies, so it is said that responsibility for it cannot be devolved to stakeholders. We are taking legal advice on that; any legal advice that the Scottish Government can provide to boost our case for devolving responsibility would be most welcome.
That is a long answer to a short question. Basically, there is no question that the pelagic fishery will be classified as industrial and come under a different management system from that which it enjoys at present.
Sandra White asked whether, if MEPs and MSPs worked together, we would better achieve reasoned opinion feedback in the eight-week mandatory period. I think that we would. I take it on board that the time pressure from which we all suffer means that no meeting would ever have a full turnout of MEPs and European and External Relations Committee members, but key MEPs would talk about the subjects that were on the agenda. MEPs would be totally involved in vital items on which it was necessary to turn around the reasoned opinion quickly, because they would be seen as having a formal role in the committee’s work. That could only be to the good.
11:15
The ultimate responsibility for submitting a reasoned opinion lies with Westminster. The UK Government represents the UK member state, so the Scottish Government cannot submit its own reasoned opinion, except through Whitehall and the Westminster Government. A system to work closely with the new coalition Government will have to be evolved.
I have just come from a meeting with the new Minister for Europe, David Lidington. I had a useful talk with him in which he enlarged on how communication and integration between Whitehall and the new coalition Government and the Brussels MEPs will work. He told us that the Prime Minister has appointed William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, to chair a special committee that will meet monthly to consider all European policy matters. Of course, as the Minister for Europe, David Lidington is a member of that committee. The new Government will have regular input into European affairs. I suggest that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government should quickly find ways of feeding into that new system.
Thank you. We have had a useful exchange. I am aware that you have another videoconference to attend.
I would be happy to have a regular videoconference slot with MEPs, perhaps once a month. The difficulty has been finding slots in the diaries of people in Brussels to attend videoconferences. Perhaps we can examine that further.
I thank Struan Stevenson for taking the time to give evidence to the committee. We look forward to more such exchanges in the future.
Thank you to the committee and take care.
I suspend the meeting to allow the videoconference equipment to be removed.
11:17
Meeting suspended.
11:20
On resuming—