Convener's Report
Item 5 on the agenda is the convener's report.
Annexe A of document EU/02/8/5 contains an extract from a letter from the European Commission on the reform of the common fisheries policy and the Hague preferences. I suggest that we thank the Commission for its response and note the content of the letter. John Home Robertson is an expert on fishing matters. Is he happy with the Commission's response?
I would not go so far as to say either that I am an expert on fishing matters or that I am happy with the Commission's response. Annexe A of the document seems to indicate that the Hague preferences will be placed on a firmer legal basis. I fear that that step may be used as an opportunity to water down the rights that have been established for the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, which brought many fishing waters into the European Union on their accession.
The Hague preferences are an important safeguard, of Scottish interests in particular. I have no doubt that the Executive will observe developments carefully. In doing so, it should have the full support of the Parliament and of the European Committee. It is worrying that there are moves afoot to alter the current arrangements, particularly in the context of other developments under the Spanish presidency, such as the departure of Steffen Smidt. Steffen Smidt is an assiduous, knowledgeable and fair official who has worked hard for fisheries conservation in the European Union. The loss of an official of that quality is rather disturbing.
At the end of June, we will take evidence from the Danish ambassador on the forthcoming Danish presidency. At that meeting, members will have an opportunity to raise some of the issues that John Home Robertson has highlighted. The next time that a member of the committee is in Brussels, they may want to meet the Commission to support the Executive's stance on the Hague preferences.
The moves that have been taken and the departure of Steffen Smidt threaten Scotland's interests and are not in keeping with the rules. Given that we have carried out an inquiry into the common fisheries policy, we may be able to exert more pressure and make it clear that the Hague preferences need to be sorted out. A decision on the matter should not be delayed until the Greek presidency begins in 2003. The things that are being done to sort out the common fisheries policy are quite wrong. Perhaps we should speak to the UK and Scottish ministers with responsibility for fisheries to reinforce that message.
We are pushing at an open door with the Scottish Executive.
That is no bad thing. The Scottish Executive takes a firm position on the issue. It would help the minister responsible, Ross Finnie, to know that he has the active, cross-party support of the European Committee and of the Parliament as a whole, as he will have difficulties negotiating on the issue. As I discovered when I held the fisheries portfolio a couple of years ago, various mainland European countries are taking concerted steps to do away with the Hague preferences. We, along with the Irish, are isolated. We will have to work hard to protect our interests.
Should we write back to the Commission, expressing our concern, and send our response to Ross Finnie, along with a letter of support?
I am not sure whether the Commission is the body to which we need to respond. Perhaps we should express our concerns to the ministers responsible for fisheries at both UK and Scottish levels, as they will be part of the team that negotiates on the issue. We should give them our support and underline the importance of the Hague preferences. The Commission will be merely the referee in the negotiations.
The problem is that someone appears to be in the process of nobbling the referee.
He is not just being nobbled—he has gone.
The departure of Steffen Smidt and the circumstances in which that happened are worrying. We should take a proactive line and indicate our support for the position of the Scottish Executive and the UK Government. However, it would do no harm to flag up our alarm about what is happening in the Commission.
We are saying that we will cover all bases—the Scottish Executive, the UK minister with responsibility for fisheries and the European Commission. We will also take up the matter with the Danish presidency when we hear from the ambassador at the end of June.
Should we request information from our MEPs and ask them to update us on what is happening?
I know that Catherine Stihler is a rapporteur on fishing matters.
Struan Stevenson is chair of the European Parliament Committee on Fisheries.
Can we write to the Committee on Fisheries and ask for its views?
That is a good idea. We will do that.
The next item to report on is the Assembly of European Regions conference in Madrid. I delegated that to John Home Robertson, who attended on our behalf. I believe that he will give us an update on that just now and that the clerk will produce a paper on it at a later date.
I think that you made the right choice when you decided to go to the Committee of the Regions rather than the Assembly of European Regions because I have the impression that the Committee of the Regions is superseding or has superseded the AER.
At the invitation of the Assembly of European Regions, I went to the conference, accompanied by Stephen Imrie, as an observer. There was an interesting and well-organised debate on the governance issue, but there was an oddly random selection of representatives of regions, small local authorities and even municipalities from Europe and from accession states. Surprisingly, there were also representatives from Norway and Switzerland, which do not think of themselves as accession states at the moment.
It was an interesting gathering, but I do not have the impression that the AER is going far. It was clear that there are diverging interests between the larger regions such as Wallonia and Catalonia and some of the other regions. As we know, there are moves towards forming an association of regions that have legislative powers. From our point of view, that might be a more useful and appropriate body than the AER. Depending on how the situation evolves, it might be appropriate for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities or major local authorities to engage with the AER, but I do not think that it is an appropriate body for us to be involved in.
Stephen Imrie will circulate some notes on the subject but the only important point is that the chairman, Dr Christoph Palmer, from Baden-Württemberg, which is one of the major German Länder, was keen that we be engaged and I have the impression that the major German Länder would be interested in establishing direct contacts with us and the Scottish Executive. We should take that forward.
Thanks. It is useful to hear about the direction in which the AER is going or is not going. I am not sure whether COSLA is a member already, but I know that some bodies in Scotland are or have been—for example, the West of Scotland European Consortium used to be a member. I know that the organisation has experienced difficulties in recent years so perhaps this is not the time for people to think about joining. We will await the paper from the clerk and further information.
The next item to note is the transcript of our recent videoconference with the Flemish and Catalan Parliaments, which was quite successful despite one or two technical difficulties. I did not take part in the previous videoconference, which was with representatives from Galicia, but I understand that there was no substantially verbatim transcript, so the fact that we have one for this videoconference is a positive development. I understand that the clerks are trying to arrange the face-to-face meeting that we discussed during the videoconference for the autumn. That will be a further positive step towards establishing more effective links with European regions.
I suggest that we also do some work on the idea that was raised during the videoconference and in our paper on the future of Europe of creating a network of European committees. There is a great deal of interest in that, especially among regional ministers to whom I have spoken. It would be useful to have a short paper that we could use to influence the work of the convention on the future of Europe. I might say something about that when I talk about the Committee of the Regions later. Are members content to note the paper that the clerks have produced on the videoconference?
I thought that the videoconference was a good idea, but I am not sure that a three-way videoconference involving three different translations worked terribly well. The members who took part gave us a series of statements, but the event did not develop into a dialogue as such. A videoconference involving two groups of people, rather than three, might make more sense.
One of the difficulties was that Catalonia was dependent on our interpreter in Scotland to hear what was happening. Brussels was also dependent on her for interpretation back into English. The process took up a lot of time and meant that the event was not as productive as it could have been.
There are ways in which such videoconferences could be improved in future. That said, the principle is good. We need to provide simultaneous interpretation for everyone in each of the videoconference locations rather than have it delivered through the cameras, as that slowed things down. Apart from that, I think that the event went okay, but the point that John Home Robertson made is valid.
I want to make the same points. It was difficult to get a conversation going when everything had to be translated. I compared the event with the visit that was made by the Basque committee for agriculture and fishing. We were able to have a better discussion during that visit and that was rewarding. The videoconference link-up felt faceless. People were far away and there was a time lag in the discussions. Another method of holding such events would be to have bilateral discussions with each group.
If simultaneous translation is not available, the event is made much harder for everybody involved. Even with simultaneous translation, it is hard to develop a relationship with people who are remote. The convener knew the committee chairs, but trying to take part in such a dialogue can be frustrating if you are not sure to whom you are talking. Members are given a list of names and have to try to work out which parties the people represent. It is not possible to get a sense of the dynamics of the other groups. I was involved in a discussion about governance, but it was hard to get under the skin of the debate.
Videoconferencing sends out all the right political messages—it is the right kind of thing to be doing. I am trying to think how we could get the benefit of such links without the hassle. The people who organised the event must have been tearing their hair out, as it was impossible to know when things were going to work. It was great that we tried to do it and, politically, it was good to send out the message that the constitutional regions are talking to each other. We need to think about how we organise other such events in future. The people in the background need to make lot of effort to set up what is a very short engagement.
I agree with Sarah Boyack. There were problems with some of the practicalities. If I had not known the committee chairs, the event would have been even more difficult. I was in the fortunate position of knowing them and that helped enormously. I understand members' problem of feeling that they were talking to people who were remote and faceless. That can happen in such link-ups when interpretation is involved.
I have been involved in link-ups with schools. The time delay makes it difficult to engage in the same way as is possible in a face-to-face exchange. I hope that we will have a face-to-face exchange in the autumn, as future video links will be made that little bit easier when we know the people with whom we are talking.
The European affairs committees in the Flemish and Catalan Parliaments also felt that the link-up was important politically. They appreciated the step that we took to take the partnership a little bit further forward. In that respect, the event was a good exercise in linking up our committee with their committees.
The event seemed to be a set piece rather than a debate. People seemed to want to make statements but not to answer questions. Perhaps we were too ambitious in thinking that we would get a debate at the first attempt; perhaps it was inevitable that the opening salvos would be formal statements with no discussion.
Welcome to the world of European forum debates—they are all like that.
They do not go on to the next stage.
Our politicians are never like that.
They do not interrupt and they do not give way to people. If you go and watch the convention on the future of Europe you will see eight hours of that.
This has been a useful discussion and I am sure that we have all learned lessons from the videoconference that will help us to do the next one better.
Nora's point brings me on neatly to the next item to report on—the Committee of the Regions. I will be brief because I know that John Home Robertson has to go to the Holyrood project meeting and that others have commitments too. I have a meeting at 4 o'clock.
I want to bring two important things to members' attention. Discussions have been held about the convention in the full Committee of the Regions and at what might be called its periphery. The vice-president of the Committee of the Regions is Eduardo Zaplana. He is leading the discussions and is producing working documents from the full committee's perspective. The commission on governance is also producing a number of reports to be fed into the Committee of the Regions. I have brought back the working document that Mr Zaplana produced on Thursday last week. I received the translation into English only on Friday—I did not have it on Thursday when we were discussing it. I have given it to the clerks for circulation. It is a first draft of how Mr Zaplana sees the input of the Committee of the Regions to the convention.
A number of us felt that the document had been drafted in isolation; we made the point that it had appeared from nowhere. As a result, the Committee of the Regions issued a press release on Friday, asking local authorities and regional representatives across Europe to contribute to a forum on the web. The COR will collate the responses and draft a paper—perhaps to be incorporated as an annexe, although I am not sure. We are all being asked to take part in the forum. I feel that the European Committee should use the information that we gathered for our governance report to produce a summary of our key views on the future of Europe, which we could then contribute to the debate. We could task our clerks with putting that on the web.
I am not sure about the time scales. If there were time for a draft to be brought to the next committee, that would be useful; if there were not, we have already agreed our governance report and we could make a summary of it. It is important that we contribute in some way. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
The second thing on which I want to report from the Committee of the Regions is the competition for European region of the year. The closing date for entries to the competition for 2004 is September of this year. The submission has to be from the head of the region—be it the President, Prime Minister or First Minister. It would be useful if we made a submission from Scotland. The competition is about how the regions have promoted Europe and I feel that, in setting up the Scottish Parliament and the European Committee, we have promoted Europe a good deal. Through dialogue, we have tried to increase Scottish people's knowledge of European matters.
We could make a good case for Scotland's being European region of the year. With the committee's consent, I would like to forward the papers to the First Minister's office with a recommendation from the committee that we participate in the process and with the suggestion that the committee would be happy to provide information about the way in which we have tried to promote Europe. That could form part of the submission. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
I am not sure that the Scottish National Party would be keen for Scotland to be portrayed as a region.
Is that a surprise?
Get rid of the SNP—that is what I say.
If SNP members were here, they could say that. They are not, so it is tough.
They can go away. They are not here.
Let us turn to our final item. The clerks have listed for our interest the forthcoming Council of the EU and European Council meetings. The clerks have met officials in the Scottish Executive and we now have agreement that we can start on the first set of agendas and briefings for the next meeting. From then on, we will be able to undertake pre and post-Council scrutiny. That is a useful step forward. It has taken a lot of work to get there, but it will be a positive development in the committee's scrutiny of the Scottish Executive.
Will we pass the documents on to the appropriate subject committees?
Not at this point. I think that they are on the web. At the moment, we have a list of the meeting dates. By the next committee meeting, we will have received information from the Executive about the key issues. Once we know the key issues, we will be able to engage with the subject committees.
I am glad that we are getting the information. It has taken a long time. It is a tribute to the committee that we will now receive it. I do not think that the Executive was very keen to provide it.
I note that it is intended to have the agendas by the next committee meeting. I suppose that they are the last thing to be received. A meeting of the internal market, consumer affairs and tourism council was scheduled for today and I hoped that we would get the agenda. However, we are keeping an eye on the situation. It would be nice to have the agendas to complete the picture.
Looking down the list of meetings, I can see what is relevant. There must be times when the internal market, consumer affairs and tourism council is relevant to Scotland, as we have a minister with responsibility for tourism. There is an education and youth affairs council on 30 May and a fisheries council on 11 June. Those areas are relevant to us, and I look forward to receiving the agendas for the meetings. Will we get the agenda for the fisheries council before 11 June? Our next meeting will be on 18 June.
Our next meeting is on 18 June.
I hope that the agenda will be forwarded to us before our meeting. Is that fair enough?
I would be happy for the information to be circulated to members as soon as we get it.
I am interested in the employment and social affairs council meeting on 3 June, as the European Commission's implementation of the action plan on skills and mobility will be discussed at that meeting. That will be relevant to our employment inquiry.
The first meeting at which we discuss the Council meetings—which will be our next meeting—will be a bit of a learning curve, but I am convinced that the work will be useful not only to this committee, but to other committees of the Parliament.
The meetings on the list run from 13 May to the end of June. Every fortnight, we will have to consider which issues we take because we cannot take them all in a oner. Some of the meetings have already been held. By the time of our next meeting, half of them will have been held and we will be receiving the agendas for the meetings at the end of June. We do not have a lot of time in which to respond. It is for the clerks to judge how we get the information. If the information comes in a oner, like this, it will be interesting for us to consider the meetings at the end of the list. The information about the meetings at the beginning of the list will tell us what has been discussed.
I presume that we are partly in the hands of the Executive with regard to how and when we receive the information. Nonetheless, we should have the chance to consider it when it arrives, so that we can start to highlight issues. I know from experience of environment and transport councils that an issue might be on the agenda for two years. The topic will not be new, but we must know when it will be discussed so that we can submit our views when that will be critical.
That is why it is important that the committee gets the briefing note that the Executive has agreed to provide. That will flag up matters that are of particular importance to Scotland. We will have to use that to prioritise the meetings. In any one meeting, there may not be a great deal that is particularly of relevance to Scotland. We will be a little dependent on the briefings, so it is important that we get them as soon as possible. Does Stephen Imrie want to comment?
I will add a small point. I have had productive meetings with officials in the Executive in the past few days. They are well aware of the committee's views and have taken them on board. I will be working hard alongside them to get the information in the form that the committee wants it as early as possible. As soon as I have the information, I will circulate it to the committee rather than wait until two or three days in advance of the committee meeting, when members traditionally receive their papers. Members could have the information in advance of their normal committee papers. Executive officials are more than aware of the committee's wishes. I am sure that they will do their best to deliver.
Thank you very much.
That is all that I have to report on today. Before I conclude the meeting, I ask members to note several things. Our next meeting is on Tuesday 18 June, because 4 June is a public holiday. We have agreed that we will discuss a number of matters at that meeting. Those include pre and post-Council scrutiny and the first draft of the structural funds reform policy paper. I note that the terms of reference for the report that Ben Wallace and Helen Eadie will do jointly will be available at the next meeting. We look forward to seeing that.
A number of meetings are coming up. Some of them have yet to be confirmed, but I understand that Commissioner Patten is looking to come to the Parliament on 25 June. We will keep members informed of that. Sir Stephen Wall is also looking to come on that day and the Danish ambassador will speak to us on 26 June. We will keep the committee posted, but it would be helpful if members could pencil those dates into their diary.
I thank colleagues and members of the public for their attendance.
Meeting closed at 15:51.