Official Report 471KB pdf
Welcome back. Agenda item 2 is consideration of our “Brussels Bulletin”. Members have a copy in front of them. Are there any questions or requests for clarification?
A little section on employment, skills and education talks about the digital skills agenda. It refers to
“Digital Champions, Ambassadors for the European Union’s Digital Agenda”.
Can we find out who those digital champions are? Is there a UK one? Are there Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh equivalents?
The bulletin also says:
“100 million EU citizens have insufficient digital skills”.
That is a message for us all to pay attention to. I would be grateful for any follow-up information and detail on that issue that we can find.
We will get that for you, Willie.
The last page of the bulletin refers to women innovators. It says that there are
“nine finalists for the EU Prize for Women Innovators 2016 competition”.
Do we have or is there any way in which we can get the names of the nine finalists? Are any of them from Scotland?
They have been announced, so we should be able to get that information for you.
Thank you.
I have a couple of points. The bulletin says:
“Migration was once again at top of the agenda”.
at the European Council summit. It says:
“Meeting in the wake of the attacks in Paris and amidst a subdued atmosphere in Brussels, the fight against terrorism was also an area of focus.”
Again, the bulletin does not say anything about what was discussed. It seems unbelievable to me that it cannot say what was discussed. The bulletin is very weak compared with what it used to be. Those issues are very important.
Secondly, under “Agriculture and Fisheries”, the bulletin says:
“The most significant feature of the meeting was the annual negotiations for fish quotas, attended by Cabinet Secretary Richard Lochhead.”
It does not say that it has now been decided, apparently, that the pelagic discard ban for herring and mackerel, which started last year, will also cover the demersal fleet. That is not even mentioned in the bulletin, although it is incredibly important for the guys in the North Sea, as they thought that they had another year to play with.
We can clarify that.
I would like that to be clarified. Again, the flipping bulletin is no good. That is my view.
We will put that in our legacy paper.
The meetings on security issues are in private, so we get only the published note. We do not get some of the details, as they deal with terrorism and security, for example. It is always difficult to get those details, but we can certainly get clarification on the other point.
Okay. Sorry. Perhaps I was jumping the gun a bit, but the whole layout of the bulletin is not what it was. I know that I have said that around five times.
We have recommendations to give to Scotland Europa. We can do that.
I noted the comments in relation to climate change issues following the Paris conference. The bulletin says:
“The European Parliament, whilst generally positive, has however argued that there is still much work to be done.”
From looking at the bulletin, that seems to be a realistic assessment. Although the conference was an important milestone, it is certainly not the end of the road.
I also noticed, under the heading “Aviation”, that an aviation summit should be taking place as we speak. The bulletin says:
“European air traffic is expected to increase by 50% by 2035.”
That is obviously important in the context of the Scottish Parliament having some sway over air passenger duty.
I go back to Jamie McGrigor’s comments on the bulletin. We had an officer who physically spent days in Brussels and was able to dig into a lot of stuff that is perhaps missing now. I recall that, some time back, a conversation took place on revisiting the matter to see whether we are still missing that. It is clear that we are missing the additional support that the officials would get by somebody being physically in Brussels. Could we explore that further? I know that it is perhaps too late to do that in this session.
We can definitely discuss that in considering the legacy paper.
Okay. Thank you.
I have one other little point about alcohol. I am rather disappointed that Mr MacAskill has left the meeting. The bulletin says:
“the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that introducing Minimum Unit Pricing, such as that proposed in Scotland, would restrict the Single Market ... but the decision should be left to the Scottish courts”.
That is quite interesting. I thought that the European Court of Justice came above the Scottish courts.
You are right on the determination that was made, but a determination was also made that the Government could decide whether there would be an impact on health. The issue comes back here because Governments may have some free rein if the impact on health outweighs the economic impact. However, the argument has not been too clear, especially when we have received determinations from Brussels. I think that the issue will be on-going.
Are members happy to share the bulletin with other committees and to highlight to them the issues that we have raised which are pertinent to them?
Members indicated agreement.
That concludes our business in public. We will now go into private session to discuss the evidence that we have heard this morning.
11:15 Meeting continued in private until 11:28.Previous
European Union Reform and Referendum