European and External Relations Committee, 07 Nov 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Official Report 294KB pdf

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Pre and Post-council Scrutiny

Agenda item 4 is our regular scrutiny of agendas and reports of meetings of the Council of the European Union. Do members have any comments? My only comment is that we seem to be back to the late papers scenario. As members will recall, we wrote to ministers some months ago to ask that good reason be given for papers being late. I suggest that we drop them a line to ask what happened this time.

I do not want to turn into Phil Gallie—sorry, Phil—but I have a couple of comments to make.

To which page do they relate?

I refer to page 5, which gives the pre-council agenda for the transport, telecommunications and energy council. Am I right in assuming that the comments in italics are from the Executive?

They are the Executive's view.

On sustainability of energy production, the Executive states:

"Issue is reserved … No significant Scottish issues as there is no separate Scottish Market for office equipment."

Instead, the Executive should have addressed the level of manufacturing activity of office equipment in Scotland and how that might be affected by the new regulations.

On the promotion of renewable energy, the Executive states that it

"undertook to write a short brief on policy priorities and an annex of current activities".

It might be useful for the committee to be given that paper, which we could then pass on to the appropriate committee. As far I am aware, we have never seen the Executive's policy priorities for renewable energy. From that perspective, I think that we need to raise the issue.

The clerks will follow up those points. Do members have any other comments?

On page 7, the post-council agenda for the economic and financial affairs council includes a section on reducing the administrative burden on businesses. It states:

"The Commission intends to report on progress in November and in the Annual Progress Report (on the Lisbon strategy) in December."

Both those reports will be significant for the committee both for Jim Wallace's inquiry and for our inquiry on the Lisbon strategy. It is important that we be given sight of those reports.

We will ensure that we get them.

When I and the clerk visited Brussels a fortnight ago, we met someone in the relevant directorate-general who I think said that the report is due on 14 November. From the trailers that we were given, the report could be quite interesting.

Good.