European Commission Work Programme 2006
Item 3 is consideration of the paper in which we track items in the European Commission's current legislative and work programme that the committee has identified as being potentially important to Scotland. I am sure that members want to comment on the paper.
In the chamber last week, we debated European structural funds. One fund that we signalled as being potentially important for Scotland was the European globalisation adjustment fund. It would be useful to hear what the Executive's take on that is—unless you are about to tell me something, convener.
I am about to tell you something. Could you tell by my face?
Never.
Irene Oldfather will make a short presentation to us on the globalisation adjustment fund, as was agreed at a previous meeting.
I was not at that meeting.
Perhaps any discussion on the fund can take place after she has given her presentation.
Okay. I will put myself back in my box.
Does anybody want to mention anything else?
On the internal market for postal services, we have had full competition in postal services since the beginning of the year. There has obviously been a fair old reaction to the European Commission's liberalisation proposals. I would like to know a bit more about how the Spanish, Belgians, Greeks and Poles managed to oppose liberalisation in the way that they have done. I would find that useful, but perhaps I should do it individually.
No, I think that Iain McIver will be more than happy to do some digging around on that, if that is acceptable to the clerk.
Is there anything else before we move on to Irene Oldfather's contribution?
Is that the presentation that you mentioned?
It is. At our meeting on 12 September, Irene promised to update us on the globalisation adjustment fund.
To call it a presentation might be slightly misleading. It is not up to me to pick up Bruce Crawford's point on the Executive's position, but I will give the committee a general update on European regions' access to the globalisation adjustment fund.
The fund was originally set up to assist redundant workers back into employment and thereby assist in dealing with asymmetric shocks to regional economies. For years, there was talk of making such a fund available, but nothing was done about it. However, the European Commission has now made a proposal. All member states are eligible for the fund and its proposed budget is €500 million. The Commission suggested that the fund would not apply where structural funds are in place.
It was also suggested that the threshold would be 1,000 redundant workers and that normal European Union budgeting procedures would apply, which means that the European Parliament is the budgetary authority and that it, in partnership with the European Council, would be responsible for signing off any applications to the fund. If members know anything about Europe, they will know that that is a cumbersome procedure. I made a report on that and, working with colleagues in Europe, tabled a number of amendments that have now been agreed. I will circulate the revised report to committee members when it is available.
We proposed that the moneys would be fast tracked. The idea of the fund was that people would not have to wait for months for agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council while matters went back and forth between bodies. We proposed that applications would be made to the European Commission so that people would not have to go through the normal budgetary process. That is a little bit contentious, but there is a precedent for it in the European solidarity fund, which operates in that manner for the same reason—that it is important to fast track procedures in the applicable circumstances.
That is the proposal, but we do not yet know how the member states or the Commission will respond to it. We also suggested a doubling of the funds from €500 million to €1 billion on the basis of research on past redundancies that has been done within the Committee of the Regions, which reflects the fact that €500 million is not really enough. The good side of that is that the fund is to be funded from underspend in European budgets. It is not coming out of some other budget but is a useful way of using up underspends quickly. That is one other reason why we felt that we could double the fund. We managed to get the Germans to agree to that.
We believe strongly that the fund should be complementary to structural funds, which is what the committee said in its report on structural funds. The globalisation adjustment fund should work in partnership with other funds in regions that are affected by large-scale redundancy. We also believe that the threshold of redundant workers should be lowered so that funding is triggered when there are 500 redundancies.
We should increase local and regional authorities' involvement in triggering funding because those tiers of government are closest to the people. Local or regional authorities usually have some responsibility for taking action when there are major redundancies. There should be a mechanism in member states to trigger funding quickly, and local and regional authorities should have a role to play in the process. The Committee of the Regions almost unanimously agreed to that position and so will adopt it, and I think that that will be reflected across the political parties in the European Parliament. We still have to find out the Commission's response to the proposal and member states' views on it, but I know that the European Parliament is incredibly sympathetic to many such initiatives and will probably replicate some of them in its report, which has not yet been produced—our report is the first out. I think that the European Parliament will support a considerable number of the recommendations that have been made, particularly in relation to the threshold, and that it will possibly support doubling the budget, but we can report back on that in January.
Thank you, Irene. I ask Bruce Crawford what he wants the committee to ask the Executive.
Irene Oldfather's remarks are useful, and she picked up on the final paragraph on the fund in the tracking paper, which deals with the "single unemployment event" threshold, which I was concerned about. We now know that the suggested redundancy threshold is 1,000, but that seems to suit the eastern European economy much better than the Scottish economy, given that redundancies tend to be on a smaller scale here. It would be useful to find out what the Scottish Executive is doing to influence matters in that respect and what it has to say about the broader issues that Irene Oldfather mentioned.
The recent redundancies in Fife, which is part of my constituency, have mostly been in the electronics industry and in lower-key jobs. Some 500 or 600 people at a time have been made redundant, so the 1,000 threshold has not been reached, but those people need to be reskilled in order to face up to future challenges. I would like to know what the Executive is doing about that.
If there are redundancies and an application is submitted for funds, to whom will the money go? How will it go there? What will it be for? Perhaps I am showing my total ignorance.
An application must be submitted by a member state, but the money will go to individual workers.
So it will go to the people who have been made redundant.
Yes. It is meant to help them to upskill and retrain.
So the money will go through the state right to the—
The funds are meant to provide training packages for people; I do not think that people will receive the euros in their hands. We have asked for years for such money to be made available, so the proposals are a huge step forward.
Bruce Crawford was right. We were supported by member states such as Ireland simply because people recognised that much of the money could go east. It is important that the money goes to where the redundancies are, but we should remember that existing member states have been hugely affected by the globalisation process. We have lost funding as a result of the enlargement process, but there is now an opportunity for us to benefit from funds.
Irene Oldfather is an expert on the matter. Her photograph has appeared in a magazine that has reported her making the points that she has just made to the committee, and she is not blowing her own trumpet hard enough. Obviously, she is central to the debate.
The Parliament's European officer, Ian Duncan, will track the issue for us. He will also track the postal services directive, which I should have mentioned.
In the recent parliamentary debate on European funding, the minister said that he would respond to all the points that members raised. Rather than the committee sending him a formal letter, perhaps we could ensure that the issue is responded to as part of the response to that debate.
We touched on the globalisation adjustment fund in that debate, but the threshold of workers was not a live issue in it.
The intelligence is that the UK may be looking at a threshold of 2,000 redundancies.
We should get into the debate now and try to influence it.
Shall we write to ministers to ask what input the Executive is making to the UK position? Does that seem fair to members?
We should also ask whether the Executive is arguing for a lower threshold and what it is doing to affect the debate.
We will write to the Executive.
I thank Irene Oldfather for her input, which was enlightening.