European and External Relations Committee, 09 Feb 2010

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Official Report 176KB pdf

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“Brussels Bulletin”

Under item 4 on our agenda, we will consider the latest issue of the "Brussels Bulletin", which members have had an opportunity to read at their leisure.

I should mention that the European Parliament will vote on the college of commissioners in plenary session today. Assuming that the college is approved, we would expect the Commission to kick-start its work programme later in February.

The committee knows of my interest in fishery matters. It is interesting to note that the adoption of the Lisbon treaty means that fisheries become subject to co-decision, which is the new term that has been introduced. However, it is also interesting to note that

"all matters related to the determination of Total Allowable Catches and fish quotas are excluded from the new arrangement",

which means that none of the important things are in it. The suggestion that was made to us by the Scottish Fishermen's Federation that this would somehow help to spread decision making out to regional areas does not seem to have been borne out, as the major things that we should be talking about are specifically excluded.

I was struck by the fact that, following the withdrawal of Rumiana Juleva, Bulgaria is putting forward a new candidate for the development portfolio. I was also interested in the fact that some of the candidates were

"deemed to have performed poorly".

I wish I had been a fly on the wall at some of those meetings.

The timescale that is now being worked to is incredibly tight, with decisions having to be ratified by the European Court of Justice within two days of today. It will be interesting to see whether that happens or whether there are any further setbacks.

Experience has shown that European activities do not always keep to such tight timescales.

Talking about timescales, we should not beat ourselves up too much about the evidence that we took two weeks ago on our not meeting the deadline for implementing the services directive, because France, Germany, Poland and Italy are way behind. They have not had their knuckles rapped as such, but the European Commission is looking to them because they have not met the deadline at all. They have failed even worse than we have on that.

I have another wee aside on Iceland's application for EU membership, which is mentioned on page 8 under "Other News". I was interested to read in, I think, The Sunday Times that Iceland may now get money from America to take prisoners from Guantanamo bay and set up a mini Guantanamo bay prison. Would that go against EU human rights legislation? Would Iceland be admitted to the EU if it was going ahead and taking the billions or millions of dollars that America is offering it? Obviously, it is a way out of the country's economic situation. Perhaps we should flag that up to our representative in Europe, Ian Duncan, or our members of the European Parliament, and ask them to keep an eye on it.

We could ask Ian Duncan to keep watch and let us know whether it emerges as an obstruction to Iceland's application, which appeared to be progressing relatively well. It is clearly a matter for the Icelandic Government to make a judgment on.

I was not aware of the issue that Sandra White raised. If that is President Obama's method of closing Guantanamo bay, a few of his supporters will be very disappointed.

Ian Duncan makes the point that there is potential for the UK and Holland to veto Iceland's application. It is a shame that he is not here to respond, because I wonder how serious a threat he considers that to be.

We could ask him to elaborate on that a little further in the next bulletin.

I am sure that it is connected with the fact that Holland and the UK are owed the most money by Iceland.

In fairness, the bulletin explicitly says that that would be the reason, but I wondered whether it was a serious threat.

We will ask Ian Duncan to explore that a little further and expand on the issue in the next bulletin. That would be useful.

On having a Guantanamo bay prison in Iceland, it went through my mind that the weather conditions would be very different from those on the coast of Cuba.

Do we agree to note the bulletin and forward it to the relevant subject committees?

Members indicated agreement.

That concludes our public business. The remaining items on our agenda are for private consideration. I now close the public part of the meeting.

Meeting continued in private until 12:31.