Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, 23 Jan 2008

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Official Report 282KB pdf

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European Union Scrutiny

For agenda item 4, paper RAE/S3/08/2/6 provides a quarterly update on European developments. I invite members to note the paper and to flag up issues on which they would like more information.

I would like more information in relation to paragraph 10, which mentions the agriculture and fisheries council meeting on 21 and 22 January—the minister might have alluded to that earlier—at which the common agricultural policy health check was discussed. We need to keep a close eye on that.

Paragraph 8 says that Commissioner Fischer Boel has

"told MEPs that ‘it goes without saying' that those Member States applying voluntary modulation—the UK and Portugal—would need to reduce the applied rate of this mechanism as the rate of compulsory modulation increases".

We need to keep that under constant review, too.

I am interested in the maritime green paper.

That is germane to much of what is happening.

Yes. That green paper or information about it should be distributed to committee members.

Did I see another finger go up? I did not, so that is it for the paper.