European and External Relations Committee, 14 Sep 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Official Report 300KB pdf

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Pre and Post-council Scrutiny

We move to pre and post-council scrutiny. Self-explanatory papers are before committee members. I invite comments on any of the issues.

On the first point, it is a good idea that we feed in questions—we should also encourage other committees to do so—when the candidate commissioners come before the European Parliament. That is a good idea and we should think about that. We should also invite—[Interruption.]

I suspend the meeting, as the fire alarm has gone off.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—

We can now return to the item that we were discussing. Do members have any comments?

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I thought that the part about the committee having any questions for candidate commissioners was a good idea. We should encourage other committees to follow that lead. I do not know what process we would use; I assume that the candidate commissioners would come before committees of the European Parliament rather than the plenary session in order to be vetted or ratified—I think that they use one of those words in the United States—or to have their nominations approved.

That process would be especially appropriate for commissioners who have particular relevance for Scotland, such as the commissioner for regional development. I think that we should invite them to come, although without the expectation that they will do so soon. Furthermore, I think that we should invite Commissioner Mandelson. That would be useful.

I understand that the clerk knows the dates on which commissioners will be visiting. I will ask him to update members.

Are we going to embark on a process whereby we put questions to them or will we have to feed our questions through the MEPs?

The clerk is suggesting that we send proposed questions to him so that he can collate them and take it from there.

We could talk to John Edward as well. He is the head of the European Parliament office in Scotland and could be helpful. The general proposal is a good idea in as much as it will give us a good opportunity to raise our profile.

Is it not the case that the questioning of the commissioners is the responsibility of MEPs? In that case, should we just contact our MEPs?

That is what is proposed.

It is for the MEPs to ask questions but it is open to us to suggest questions that we believe it would be in Scotland's interest to have answered. I will ask the clerk to e-mail members to find out whether they have any questions that could be passed to the MEPs. Are there any other comments?

The post-council report on the meeting of the employment, social policy, health and consumer affairs council talks about childhood asthma and influenza pandemic preparedness and response planning. Those issues are particularly relevant in Scotland and have been in the news a lot. It would be helpful if we highlighted those items to the Health Committee.

I, too, refer to that council and the section in the report headed "Council Conclusions on Reduction of Alcohol-Related Damage among young people". It states:

"The Presidency called upon the Commission to continue with the development of its alcohol strategy."

I would like more information about that, as it is relevant to what the Executive is trying to do through the implementation of its national plan on alcohol.

We will arrange that.