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Our second item is an evidence session with the ambassador to the United Kingdom for Luxembourg. We are discussing the priorities of the Luxembourg presidency of the Council of the European Union, and I welcome to the committee His Excellency Patrick Engelberg, the ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to the United Kingdom.
I hope that you had a nice evening last night, ambassador. We had a wonderful reception for you in the Parliament, and I am sure that the members who were there enjoyed themselves and very much enjoyed your speech. We are looking forward to your evidence this morning, starting with a brief opening statement.
Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, members of the committee. Thank you once more for having so graciously hosted the reception of the Luxembourg presidency at the Parliament yesterday evening.
I am very honoured to be invited to give evidence this morning and to engage in dialogue with this committee on the Luxembourg presidency. I also wanted to congratulate this committee on its very keen interest in European affairs. I was very impressed when I was browsing through the documents, papers and reports that you produce by the very thorough interest that you take in European affairs—although it is a little bit intimidating because I have the impression that you know much more about the Luxembourg presidency than I do.
As you know, the presidency started on 1 July. Second-semester presidencies are always slightly different from first-semester presidencies. They are shorter and the bulk of the work is done in autumn because the summer break cuts a little bit into our efforts. For us, this presidency is the first to take place under the auspices of the new Lisbon treaty where the new institutional balance has been established and the presidency competencies have changed a lot. However, the programme is placed in the context of the implementation of the strategic agenda of the European Council, which was adopted in June 2014 and outlines the key priorities for the European Union for the next five years. The framework is set and the programme also takes into account the policy orientations of the president of the Commission, the Commission’s annual work programme and, of course, the trio programme of the Italian, Latvian and Luxembourg presidencies.
We see this as a genuine opportunity. It will allow us to show our attachment and our engagement vis-à-vis the European integration project and to share our expertise and extensive tradition in this field. The task that we have taken on will allow us to put at the service of Europe the qualities that we esteem very highly: the vocation to build bridges; the capacity to reconcile diverging positions and traditions; and the willingness to commit ourselves to the quest for compromise. In general, Luxembourg will strive to apply its core values—reliability, dynamism and openness—to this presidency for the benefit of the European Union.
Recalling our attachment to the European integration process and to the principles and values that the European Union is built upon, we have chosen an approach based on outreach and openness, listening to citizens, supporting enterprises and collaborating with partners and institutions with a view to acting in the general interests of the EU. As our Prime Minister stated recently, we intend to build bridges between the member states. Later he said that it is not going to be a routine presidency, as we are facing a number of crises and tensions and we are very much concerned about, and dedicated to, finding a solution to them—of course, with all the member states.
You know that we have seven key objectives. I will cite them very quickly: stimulating investment to boost growth and employment, which is certainly the main concern of the European public; deepening the social dimension of the EU, which has probably been a little bit neglected over the past years because we had to face so many hard decisions about our economy; managing migration—I will certainly come back to that later—combining freedom, justice and security; revitalising the single market by focusing on its digital dimension, which is certainly one of our main priorities; placing European competitiveness in a global and transparent framework; promoting sustainable development, with a very important rendezvous, which is the COP21 in Paris; and strengthening the European presence on the global stage.
When we started the presidency, we were already in the middle of the Greek crisis. It is not direct presidency business, as much of it was done as a euro group and also at the level of the European Council. Nevertheless, in chairing the economic and financial affairs council—ECOFIN—Luxembourg was very much involved as well. We eventually came to what I would describe as a positive outcome, and we are very confident that the Greek people will now be back on track to improve their situation.
The UK renegotiation is another of those topics where the presidency is not directly in the front line but, as you can imagine, we have many high-level contacts with our British colleagues and we have assured them of the full support of the Luxembourg presidency in finding a constructive, positive solution for all parties. Like so many European countries, we are in favour of reform—the EU needs to be reformed in certain areas—but what we undertake must not jeopardise the acquis communautaire nor put into question the main freedoms of the EU.
On migration, you know that the presidency has been very active over the past month. We have now convened for next Tuesday the third extraordinary justice and home affairs council. The first was on 20 July, when we endeavoured to find a solution to relocate and resettle up to 60,000 people. The second was last Monday. It has been presented in the press—a little bit quickly—as not having been a success. I do not share that view. One of the indications that it is at least, let us say, encouraging success is that we have a follow-up meeting next Tuesday. We know what the situation is, we know what the challenges are, and the presidency is absolutely dedicated to finding, in the spirit of solidarity and responsibility, a solution with our member states for the benefit of the refugees.
The EU has been working very hard for the past six months on the issue. I know that my colleagues in Brussels are working non-stop, around the clock, on this dossier, consulting member states and convening many meetings. We are confident that we will make progress, especially now that the Commission has asked us to speak on the relocation of 120,000 refugees. There is a broad agreement to do that.
We still have to work on how we are going to relocate the refugees through the mandatory quota system. We understand that, for a number of member states, that is problematic for internal reasons, and we know that, because of political traditions, it is difficult to accept such a system now. Therefore, we cannot force a decision or solution too quickly.
We probably need some time so that people get used to doing more than they thought they would in the first place, but we have also seen the surge of generosity and welcome from people throughout Europe. We saw it here in Scotland. We saw it in many countries last weekend, with people going into the streets and demonstrating their willingness to help, which is very encouraging. We are confident that over time we will find a solution to the present problem.
We must not forget that it is a crisis that is probably only the tip of the iceberg and we will be faced in the future with more waves of refugees coming to Europe. Something that has not really been debated so far is that perhaps one day we will also face climate refugees. It is not a topic that will go away very soon.
I will stop there and I am ready to engage with you on the different topics.
Thank you very much. There is a diversity of topics, but you quite rightly focused on some of the more pertinent ones right now. I believe that Luxembourg has held the presidency on a number of occasions now and I think that being a small nation makes you quite agile. Does the benefit of your experience allow you to hit the ground running? You may have a bit of an overview on what needs to be targeted quite quickly. Is that why your seven priorities are in the order that they are in?
It is true that it is our 12th presidency, which gives us certain experience, although the last one was in 2005 under very different circumstances and very different rules. We still have the same foreign minister who chaired the EU general affairs council from the first council in 2005. Like all of us, he is used to a different system. In 2005, the presidency would have been at the exact centre of everything that was going on in Brussels. Now we have new institutions—we have the permanent President of the European Council and we have the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In a way, that restricts the presidency actions and activities to certain domains.
We are no longer as pivotal, which for us Luxembourgers is something that we have to integrate and get used to. It is comfortable because we do not have to chair so many hundreds of meetings but it is also sometimes a little bit confusing. In June, when things started to get more concrete and we also had the Greek crisis, I was asked so many questions in London—“What is the presidency going to do on the Greek crisis? What is the presidency going to do on British renegotiation? What is the presidency going to do on this and that?” I had to say, “Sorry, but for the Greek crisis, we are not in the driver’s seat. On the British renegotiation we must see what working methods the European Council comes up with”. All that limits our margin of manoeuvre a little bit.
Luxembourg has had experience over the years, and because we believe so much in European integration, we tend to put the European agenda above our national interests, which is very much reflected by the comments that were made by our partners over all the previous presidencies. I think that that is perhaps more typical for small countries—at least it is typical for Luxembourg. That sounds very idealistic but it is truly how we approach European affairs. I recently had a discussion in which I illustrated how much European topics are part of our national political debate. I will give you an example that the committee may perhaps find interesting. When, for example, civil servants or ministers give evidence in Luxembourg at the various committees, the members of the Europe Parliament are invited to join that national Parliament committee. There is no ring-fencing around national politics and European politics.
By that I mean that the European debate is very much integrated in the national debate, hence the capacity to put European affairs above the national interest for the six months of the presidency. That is highly regarded by other member states. They trust us. I must stress this point—they trust us to genuinely push European dossiers ahead, which does not mean of course that they do not overlap with some of our national interests because certain positions and certain situations go into our work programme.
An example is the digital single market. We are thoroughly convinced that the digital single market is absolutely fundamental for the European Union with regard to strengthening and expanding the single market, which is a cornerstone of the EU for generating growth and then employment. However, as a small country we experience what it means to be blocked off from digital content from other countries, which is known as geoblocking. We know what it means because we have a small market. When we order something abroad via e-commerce we so often hear, “We do not deliver to Luxembourg,” or we have to pay an extra amount of money to get it delivered, so we know what it means to experience such annoyances. The UK is a big country; people here can order so much from British providers. In Luxembourg, it is not so easy. All that makes us think that we should put the European agenda ahead of ours.
What can a small country do? Because we enjoy the trust and confidence of the EU member states, we can probably achieve more on certain dossiers than countries that are identified directly with a particular interest. I do not cite any particular country, but one country might be well known for trying to push agriculture because it has its own very strong interest. Other countries will try to push this or that interest. For the EU presidency, it is probably an advantage to be a small country and not to be seen as harmful.
My colleague Willie Coffey is going to give you an insight into some of the challenges that we have in Scotland, which are very similar to those in Luxembourg.
Good morning, ambassador. The whole digital agenda has been discussed at this committee on a number of occasions and members are interested in many of the aspects of it, from broadband to mobile speeds, mobile roaming charges and so on. I am keen to ask you about your digital agenda priorities and whether you might wish to make any progress in bringing roaming charges for mobiles across the European Union to an earlier end. I know that the member states pushed the timing back for that and I would like to understand why. Does Luxembourg see that as a priority during its presidency? What do you think you might be able to do about it?
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Again, our national situation is such that, when you have a Luxembourg mobile phone provider, the country is so small that you often slide into a foreign network. Luxembourgers probably suffer from that every day. The idea of abolishing roaming charges was initiated by the commissioner in charge of communication and media, Mrs Reding, who happens to be a Luxembourg commissioner and who, for other reasons, was not immensely popular in this country. She does not get enough credit for having initiated the Commission initiative to abolish roaming charges throughout Europe.
Although, obviously, Luxembourg would benefit from the initiative, the providers in Luxembourg were not so happy about it because they would suffer economically. Although I did not follow the dossier directly, the fact that it has been pushed back a bit is probably to give more time to the industry to adapt to it. A lot of revenue is generated from roaming charges and that must be bridged. However, I imagine that the fact that people are now using their mobile phones much more while travelling, because they do not have to pay roaming charges, will compensate for the loss in roaming charges. There will be more communications.
The Luxembourg presidency, nevertheless, is very much putting the digital agenda—the digital single market—at the top of our list. That was confirmed again last week when our ministers talked to the European Parliament. They see the digital agenda as one of the elements that should make progress fast. Unfortunately, I cannot give the committee a concrete deadline but I know that we are pushing other aspects that are absolutely fundamental for the digital single market, for example data protection. Latvian colleagues managed to come to an agreement at council level and we have scheduled trilogue discussions with the European Parliament in such a way that, by the end of the year, a data protection package should be agreed.
The package is absolutely fundamental for the digital single market. I can imagine that roaming charges would be part of the general approach, too.
Thank you for that and I wish you luck in pursuing that particular agenda.
Good morning, ambassador. I know that some good work is happening in the area of women’s rights and gender equality. However, could you provide more detail about measures that you are putting in place to ensure a balanced representation of women and men in political and economic decision-making processes?
Again, that is a topic that very much reflects our national policy. It is very high on our national agenda and it also features in a prominent position in our work programme. Browsing quickly through my papers, I am not sure whether I have the latest details of how and at what point we are going to push that topic. However, as I said, I know that it features prominently in our programme of work. Although I cannot give you more detail of exactly how we are going to achieve that, my Government, as the presidency, is very sensitive to the issue. That general comment is the only thing that I can tell you now.
Would you be able to give us an update at a later date, ambassador?
Absolutely. If possible, I will send you more in written form.
That would be great. Thank you.
In relation to the current refugee crisis affecting Europe, competence largely rests with member state Governments. The crisis is not new—it has just escalated. For example, over the past 15 years, 30,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to get to Europe. Do you consider that the response from Europe has been unified enough? What can your presidency do to produce a more unified response in relation to trying to stop these fearful deaths in the Mediterranean?
Well, never to stop trying: that is what my Government is doing. We are conscious that it is an absolutely tragic situation for the refugees concerned. We should not forget them. When we talk about the refugee crisis, we are talking about actual people who are experiencing terrible hardship. Thousands have drowned this year alone. Also, we should not forget—this makes things a little bit more urgent—that in six weeks’ time it will be winter in the Balkans, Turkey and Lebanon. We are running out of time.
The only possibility that we have as a presidency is to keep trying—we will never stop trying—and to convene one justice and home affairs council after the other, being sensitive to the idea that we might have an extraordinary European Council, perhaps in October. We know that the European Council in October will be almost exclusively dealing with the refugee crisis and trying to convince member states that we need to show the necessary solidarity—solidarity first of all with the refugees, of course, but also among ourselves.
As we know, solidarity is not a one-way street. Sometimes it is a little bit more complex than it is perhaps presented in the press or in political slogans. Last week, Mr Juncker made a very long intervention on that, in which he said very strong and very true things. At the same time, he expressed a lot of solidarity with the three countries that are in the front line, including Hungary, which is now facing a new situation; so far, it has mainly been Greece and Italy. Hungary already has 140,000 or so people on its soil. It is an absolutely difficult situation.
Some countries are not used to managing such a situation. Greece and Italy have a long experience, unfortunately, and have systems and procedures in place. They have people who are knowledgeable and have experience; other countries do not. Solidarity is not only about saying, “According to the Dublin procedures, you must do this and that”. It is also about member states that are far away from the front line understanding the hardship of those on the front line. Solidarity goes in different directions.
As I said in my introduction, in Brussels we are literally working around the clock non-stop producing papers. We did it for last Monday. We did not succeed in having proper official conclusions, which is why we adopted presidency conclusions. We would not have done it if we had not been confident that it indicated a robust process, eventually leading to formal council conclusions. However, we have made progress on the number of 120,000. We know that it is not enough but we must proceed incrementally because, otherwise, public opinion will not be able to digest everything.
We agreed on reinforcing our borders—on border control. We agreed to give more means to Frontex. We agreed to be more concrete and more operational when it comes to return policies, because we know that a number of economic migrants are now coming over with the refugees. Our record in sending people back who are not entitled to refugee status is not very good. We know that.
By working on all those satellite dossiers, which are so important when it comes to the crisis as a whole, we show solidarity with the member states that get the first wave of refugees. They understand that we are not only sending money, volunteers and perhaps equipment but working on a policy that will, in the medium term, relieve them of that huge effort because we will have better agreements with countries for the return. We will have better agreements with third countries of transit. We will at last have an EU agreement on safe countries that we can send people back to and so on. At the next stage, therefore, fewer people will come to those countries. Solidarity is a complex issue.
We know that the problem will not go away, so we must remain hands-on and not put ourselves under undue pressure. The meeting last Monday was not meant to solve the crisis once and for all. Unfortunately, the press were saying, “They did not succeed. Schengen is dead”, and all those sorts of things. That does not help. We cannot forbid the press to say what the press wants to say, but we must remain constant and determined in what we are doing so that all member states feel that we are developing a strong policy that, ultimately, will help us collectively to face these problems.
Thank you very much for that, your excellency. On the issue of changing or improving EU procedures, will EU reform be on the agenda for the December European Council meeting? What are the most important things that you think will be discussed?
Do you mean EU reform in a more general sense?
Yes.
EU reform has been on our agenda for quite a while. You can see that in what the present Commission is doing, in the mandate given to Vice-President Timmermans and in our work on better regulation. We very much intend to have the institutional agreement, which is part of our reform effort, adopted in December.
The process has been stimulated by the British will to have renegotiation and the idea that there are some reform points that must be discussed, so we are not only in an on-going reform process. It is true, however, that in December we intend to have some stocktaking on where we stand with reforms. The Luxembourg presidency wants to have certain things agreed by then, such as the institutional agreement.
We know that there is a sort of rendezvous clause to discuss again British renegotiation and we know that that is worked on in dedicated working groups, so we are quite confident that, in December, we will have a reform agenda to discuss and, we hope, to agree on.
Good morning. The European convention on human rights is quite controversial among some people in the United Kingdom. Can you give us an update on the possible accession of the European Union to the convention?
Thank you for the question. It is indeed one of our objectives to have the EU accede to the European convention on human rights. We know that there are some legal considerations, which are not of presidency competence to solve. I may be able to find in my papers the proper wording that has been agreed on. As we know, it is part of the Lisbon treaty to accede to ECHR. We are waiting for the opinion of the European Court of Justice. There is a legal question that remains open. Luxembourg is absolutely in favour of the accession. However, I know that, in this country, there are different views.
Indeed.
I will move on to another slightly contentious issue: TTIP. Is there anything that you can add to the point about the promotion of maximum transparency in relation to ISDS, or the investment court system as it seems to be renamed by the Commission?
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Yes. Luxembourg is among the group of countries that were absolutely not happy with the ISDS proposal. The public in Luxembourg generally are not hesitant to have such an agreement; on the contrary, Luxembourg is an open economy and we owe our success to having very open trade with our neighbouring countries and those further away. However, we were very uncomfortable with the ISDS system.
Luxembourg was among the countries that proposed a different system, which has been supported by the European Parliament, to have a court of independent judges rather than a sort of arbitration system in which the transparency and the appointment of the members of the system would not be transparent enough. Such an arbitration system would also not be in line with our understanding of what the competence of national states and Parliaments should be. Luxembourg therefore very much supports the proposal to have an international court of independent judges.
To improve transparency, Luxembourg has decided, during the presidency, to organise a public debate in Brussels—I think that it is in November—so that the general public and trade unions can participate and to ensure that the public gets some sort of ownership on what is really going on in TTIP. We are among the countries that fully understand why, at the beginning, there was a lot of reservation among the European public. That was because the process was seen as being behind closed doors and one that would eventually cause a lot of negative consequences in many fields. I know that in Scotland and the UK there are also a lot of reservations on certain aspects.
Now that the Commission is taking a much more transparent approach, which can probably even be improved over time, along with the public debate that has been organised by the presidency in November in Brussels, the public understanding of what is going on should be enhanced and improved.
Have specific invitations to that general public debate been given to any people in Scotland?
I am not aware whether there will be formal invitations or whether it is just an open invitation, but I can certainly check that and let you know.
That would be helpful.
I take it from your question that the committee would be interested in being involved.
We would certainly be interested in knowing more about it.
The committee has taken a keen interest in TTIP. It has been a hot topic of conversation over the past few months, not only in the committee but on the social media related to the committee. Many constituents have raised concerns about the whole process, so it is something that we keep a watching brief on.
Ambassador, will you reflect on Luxembourg’s experience of having the presidency? You said that the last time was 2005. We could look back at that period in Europe’s history as a time when it was making great progress on social rights and trade union rights and was seen as quite a positive force for change. Now, in taking on the presidency, there are many challenges and difficulties, particularly economic ones, facing the European Community. How do you find the change? What are the challenges for the European project? Do you recognise that there has been a significant shift? Increasingly, there is a feeling that it is not relevant to people in their communities or life. How do we increase that understanding of what the European Union has to offer and make it more relevant to the public?
Your question goes straight to the core of our approach. Obviously, after the 2008 crisis, we were all very busy saving our national budgets, fighting debts and all those sorts of things, and we probably all neglected the social dimension of the EU. That opened the door to radical parties, as we have seen in some countries. Those have become hugely popular because they have been promising to the general public a number of improvements that might be very unrealistic.
In general in Luxembourg, we are very conscious and aware of the necessity of a strong social dimension, and we are very much convinced that that applies to the EU as a whole. We are also very aware—I think that this is shared by all the member states—that the EU has become very distant and difficult for the general public to comprehend. It is a far-away and strange animal and people do not connect to it any more. That is why we titled our programme “A Union for the citizens”, because we want to reconnect the general public and the EU.
Claire Baker spoke about making the EU relevant, and that is exactly what we want. We want to make the EU relevant again for European citizens. That is why we structured our seven priorities in such a way that, although we start with economic growth, which is fundamental for giving us a means to be more social, that economic growth should not be to the detriment of the people. That is why we need to connect economic growth with the social dimension. When we talk about improving the social dimension, we do not mean that we should just spread out a lot of money and give more benefits to people, which would actually be counterproductive. Instead, we want to reform labour markets and to make sure that our young people get the right education and skills so that they can find a job later. Obviously, we also want to improve working conditions in certain sectors. One example that springs to my mind is the transport sector, where we know that lorry drivers experience a lot of hard working conditions. We might improve the working conditions in certain sectors.
We want to ensure that the European citizen sees that the EU has a policy that ultimately will be for their benefit. That is why we want to deepen, expand and improve the single market. That may sound very remote from what people think but, to put it concretely, it means that there will be more jobs. That is why we are so convinced about and working hard on the digital single market. As well as adding a new layer to the single market, the digital single market is the future—it is how the economy will function and will be run in the future. We must make sure that, at the same time, we give digital skills to our populations, not only so that they are comfortable when they are on Facebook and surfing other media but so that they get the right skills to be able to apply for the new jobs that are going to be created, and so that they can access products and services.
Another dimension of making the EU more relevant is that we need to be more concrete and bring more positive outcomes on sustainable development and environmental protection, because we all live in an environment that needs to be protected. If the public sees the EU as having positive policies on that, that will make the EU more relevant in people’s eyes.
We must absolutely make sure that people see the EU as a positive force and that they do not lose confidence and then just follow radical parties, which often happen to be anti-EU. The EU is a positive thing. We in Luxembourg are very much convinced of that, and that is also the conviction of the Luxembourg presidency.
As we have exhausted our questions to you, ambassador, I thank you very much for joining us. We look forward to an on-going dialogue with you and we wish you all the best with your presidency. You have lots of challenges ahead of you, but I see a determination to face those challenges, and we wish you well in that work. We will take a keen interest in how you do that.
Thank you very much, ambassador. I think that you are going to stay with us for the next agenda item, after which we will go into private.