European and External Relations Committee, 27 Sep 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Official Report 185KB pdf

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Pre and Post-council Scrutiny

Agenda item 4 is the committee's regular item on pre and post-council scrutiny. I read with great interest all the papers for the item and I found them quite fascinating. Do other members, who have been doing this for some time, have any points to raise?

I draw attention to agenda item 1 of the transport, telecommunications and energy council. The item deals with a

"Revised proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on … the award of public service contracts in passenger transport by rail and by road".

I have been in correspondence with the Minister for Transport and Telecommunications on the length of time that is permitted for public service obligation contracts for air services, especially the internal air services within Orkney. During the summer, I received a response—I tried to get the letter faxed from my constituency office, but it has not come through yet—which suggested that movements were afoot to change the maximum time to six years, as the current maximum of three years makes it somewhat difficult for air companies to invest in new planes and so on. However, the issue does not appear to be on the agenda, as item 1 deals only with rail and road. Do we know whether air services have been omitted from the proposed regulation at some stage along the process or whether air transport will be the subject of a separate proposal? I rather think that the proposed regulation originally included air transport and that air transport has been removed. Can we get some clarification on that matter?

Yes. We will write to the Executive to ask for clarification before our next meeting.

Section 3 of annex B—on page 4 of our paper—suggests that agreement on structural and cohesion funds will need to be reached on 3 October to ensure that SCF payments are not delayed beyond January 2007. Do we have a clear direction from the Scottish Executive as to what it will do on that issue? Given the importance of such funds to the Highlands and Islands, I am sure that Jim Wallace will agree with me that it is important that we know exactly what is happening.

The recommendations section of our paper notes that we await information from the Scottish Executive on that issue. We can emphasise the point that has been raised to ensure that it is covered in the Executive's response.

I note that page 11 gives information—which I presume will be considered in an agenda item in the pre-council meeting for the competitiveness council on 11 October—on progress in transposing internal market directives, which is an issue that the committee has previously considered. Personally, I was surprised to read that the average percentage per member state of internal market directives that have not yet been written into national law is now 1.9 per cent. That is a huge improvement on last year's figure of 7.1 per cent and quite an improvement on previous years. Given that we can be quick to criticise lack of progress, it is important to note that report.

On that point—someone can correct me if I am wrong on this—I suspect that, on page 11, the first bullet point under the heading "Transposition of Internal Market Directives" should refer to the "EU 15" and only the second bullet point should refer to the "EU 25". Did other members read that in the same way? We can check out whether it is just a typo, but it seems a bit awry.

Do you have a recommendation on the issue or do you want clarification of some matter?

No, I just note the improvement. It will be interesting to see that discussion when we deal with the issue as part of our post-council scrutiny. As I said, the committee has kind of kept an eye on the issue. To be honest, I was surprised at the improvement. I thought it worth mentioning, even though the issue is a pre-council agenda item rather than one for post-council scrutiny.

It is interesting that the new member states seem to be performing better.

Yes, they are doing particularly well.

Do members wish to raise any other points?

We should also note the better regulation conference that took place in Edinburgh on 22 and 23 September. I am not sure whether anyone from the Executive or the committee was involved in it; I know that I was not. However, as better regulation is something that the committee has discussed, it might be interesting if we could have a report on what progress was made at that conference.

Subject to everything that has gone before in discussion on this item, are members content to note and agree to the recommendations in annex A?

Members indicated agreement.