European Committee, 18 Jun 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Official Report 199KB pdf

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Executive Briefings

Item 7 concerns pre and post-Council scrutiny. I am really pleased that we can bring this paper to the committee. It is a welcome step forward. Some of the position statements from the Executive are helpful indeed. I understand that the Scottish Executive environment and rural affairs department has sent supplementary material, which has been circulated this afternoon.

The postponement of our meeting at the start of June because it coincided with a holiday means that we have had a little bit of a time lag in discussing some of the matters. However, I understand that committee members have made comments directly to the clerks.

It will be important for us to receive post-Council reports. I believe that we have the fisheries council report already and that the education and youth council report will be circulated today. Is that correct?

Yes. Those reports should have been circulated. I will ask my colleagues to ensure that they have been.

The clerks have prepared a number of recommendations for each of the meetings that we are considering today. I want to find out whether anyone disagrees with any of the clerks' recommendations or whether we can agree the proposals that are contained in the paper.

I take it that we are talking about the briefing paper, because I have not seen the additional papers. I agree with the suggestions, which are quite sensible. One or two submissions that have been selected as good models to follow are quite helpful. Although we do not need an essay on every topic, we still need a reasonably helpful explanation of things. However, one or two councils are missing from the list of those that have provided pre-event information, and we should chase that up. We should also chase up the post-events commentary, which is important if we know that something might not hit an agenda of a particular council meeting but might be included at its next meeting. The dates for the next meetings of the councils will be known now, so it will be useful to get that commentary to ensure that we are able to track matters over the summer.

The agenda for the fisheries council meeting on 11 June is outlined on page 16 of the briefing paper. Members will be aware that the Commission has proposed a package of reforms for the common fisheries policy, which is obviously important to Scottish fishermen. However, there is still considerable confusion over the matter and on Friday I attended a briefing at the European Parliament's new offices in the Tun. Although the Executive's briefing mentions

"three areas of particular significance to Scotland",

as far as fisheries are concerned, it does not say whether the minister attended the meeting. Indeed, the minister's letter does not make that clear, either. The meeting on 11 June was the first to be held after the reforms were proposed, so it is important that we know whether the minister attended. Other countries managed to clarify matters and raised questions that their constituents had asked. In fact, given that we have conducted an inquiry into the CFP, we should ask the minister who has responsibility for fisheries to come before the committee and discuss the proposals.

Because proposals for CFP reform are out for consultation—after all, we have prepared a report on the subject—it would be appropriate to do as Ben Wallace suggests. Do other members agree to invite Ross Finnie to a meeting in early September to discuss progress on the matter?

The minister's attendance would be helpful because we are faced with a very tight time scale. I think that the Commission is trying to reach preliminary agreement on certain issues by October.

We will ask the clerk to liaise with the minister's office to find out whether he can attend a meeting in September. That should give us some time.

Thanks.

Members will agree that the provision of the information is a welcome step forward and that it should help the committee to be better informed about European issues.