“Brussels Bulletin”
I reconvene the meeting. As we seem to be a little bit ahead of schedule as far as the videolink is concerned, I propose to bring forward item 4 and to hear from Ian Duncan on the "Brussels Bulletin". I hope that Catherine Stihler will turn up in the meantime.
Can you hear us, Ian?
Ian Duncan (Scottish Parliament European Officer):
I certainly can.
Thank you very much for the "Brussels Bulletin". You have said in the bulletin that one or two items are under consideration but you might, as the heads of Government have now met, be able to update us on one or two things. Do you wish to make any introductory remarks before I move to colleagues' questions?
Yes. The European Council had one main item of business, which was climate change, and one item of business that was discussed primarily in the corridors, which was the Lisbon treaty situation and associated issues.
On climate change, no resolution was reached on financing. The sticking point is aid to poor nations, which will, according to European Commission estimates, need €2 billion to €15 billion per annum. That is a lot of money and a number of European Union states, led by Poland and Hungary, are not convinced that it should come primarily from them: indeed, the Prime Minister of Poland has said that he is not sure why he should be providing this subsidy, given that his country is actually poorer than Brazil. Poland would like any such contributions to be voluntary. As I say, no resolution was reached, but a working group has been set up, which might make a difference.
As an aside, the focus of the climate change discussions in Copenhagen is on replacing the Kyoto protocol in 2012. However, between 2010 and 2012, there will have to be some financing, which has been estimated at between €5 billion and €7 billion. It is hoped that the working group will resolve the issue when it reports, but that is unlikely to happen before the Copenhagen discussions.
On the Lisbon situation, members will be aware that the Czech Government requested, and was granted, an opt-out from the chapter on fundamental rights. In having an opt-out, the Czech Republic now joins the United Kingdom and Poland. However, the Czech president has not yet signed the Lisbon treaty because the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic has not reached a conclusion on the matter. It will do so today, so watch this space.
The decision on who will be the next President of the European Council has not been resolved, but a number of issues have emerged. As the committee might be aware, Tony Blair's candidacy has likely not secured the backing of the large member states, so he is unlikely to be the next President; indeed, it looks like the Council will seek to appoint a chairman rather than a charismatic leader; the current code word is "mild-mannered", and there are four such candidates in play. In the bulletin, I mention Guy Verhofstadt, the former Prime Minister of Belgium, but he has been deemed to be not mild-mannered enough and appears to have been replaced in the running by the current Belgian Prime Minister, the very mild-mannered Herman Van Rompuy. The other front runner is the Luxembourg Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkende—I am sorry, I meant Balkenende; I have been practising that all morning—is the dark horse. However, Mr Balkenende is unlikely to take that any further forward because his coalition Government would collapse, which would cause an early election.
There are several candidates for the high representative. You might recall that, if the right-of-centre grouping secures the presidency of the Council, the high representative is almost certain to be drawn from the socialist groupings, and there are a number of candidates there. You will have heard quite a lot of talk about the UK Foreign Secretary. He is not really breaking cover here in Brussels, although he may yet be a dark-horse candidate. The foreign secretary of Spain, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, is at the front of the queue. Adrian Severin, a Romanian member of the European Parliament, is also a candidate. Also in the running are three former foreign secretaries of Germany, France and Austria: Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Élisabeth Guigou and Alfred Gusenbauer. Of course, none of those candidates was officially discussed at the meeting.
One hopes that the matter will be resolved at the extraordinary summit that is scheduled to take place on 13 and 14 November. That should clarify all the horse trading that is going on at the moment. The Council hopes to reach a unanimous decision but can, if need be, use qualified majority voting.
That is the run-down of what took place at the Council on Thursday and Friday of last week. I am happy to report on any other aspect of the bulletin that may be of interest.
Thank you very much, Ian. I will not have time to take questions from all members, as we must move on to evidence from the MEPs, but I am sure that members can raise a couple of pressing points.
Before we do that, I welcome Iain Smith to the committee, wearing a slightly different hat as the substitute for Jim Hume. It is lovely to have you here as a committee member, Iain.
Sandra White has a point to raise.
We will have to agree to disagree on how charismatic Tony Blair is.
On page 8 of the bulletin, under the heading "Carbon capture and storage", we are told that Longannet did not receive funding. Is there any explanation for that? Have you gleaned any more information about that? Hatfield, in the north of England, secured funding but, unfortunately, Longannet did not.
Yes. I suspect that that was quite a surprise for a number of individuals, not least Scottish Power, which is behind the Longannet scheme. Scottish Power is very frustrated—there is no doubt about that. One of its representatives said, "If we had just bought a large greenfield site somewhere in Scotland, we would have been ahead of the race." There is, as yet, no detail on the machinations that went on behind the decision. There will almost certainly be a number of issues at national level. There may be some benefit in writing to the Scottish Government or the UK Government for information, either of which would be able to provide a clear update on what has gone on. I suspect that the MEPs from whom you will hear this morning might be able to provide more information, too.
Sandra White has raised an important point that we will perhaps pursue with the MEPs.