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The final item on our agenda is a paper from the clerk on the presidency of the European Council. The key point is the recommendation that we should appoint one or more committee reporters to meet representatives of the EU French presidency. If we agree to do that, we would have to submit a bid for the visits.
It would be logical to have one reporter from each party.
The recommendation is sensible and it follows on from the kind of discussions that we have been having. The clerk's paper mentions "Paris and/or Brussels". The committee used to make an annual trip to Brussels. I am not making a plea for that, because now that Keith Brown and I are both back on the Committee of the Regions we get opportunities to go to Brussels monthly at least.
Why do we not try to kill two or three birds with one stone? If we are going to pursue the renewables directive while we are in Brussels, we could also consider the presidency issue and other issues.
We could, although I presume that there will be time limitations because of this Parliament's sitting times. I do not imagine that any of us can be off on Wednesdays or Thursdays. We would be talking about Mondays and Tuesdays.
The idea, Alex, was to consider whether it would be useful for the committee to engage more readily with the presidency, since it is the member state of the President that tends to drive the agenda.
This is a new idea for a visit that is focused specifically on the new presidency. Should we say that, as a maximum, we will have one reporter from each party? If any party does not want to take up that offer, the total could be fewer than four. Four would be the maximum, but it could be three or two, if that is what people want. We will leave it up to the individual parties to sort that out.
We have done well, finishing at 12.24 with such a busy agenda. We have covered a lot of ground. I thank everyone very much indeed for attending.
Meeting closed at 12:24.
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