European and External Relations Committee, 30 Mar 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Official Report 117KB pdf

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Convener's Report

The next item is the convener's report. The first item is a reply from the Scottish Executive on locating EU agencies in Scotland, which has just been passed to members. The committee will recall that we wrote to the Executive to ask for information on which EU agencies were up for grabs and which the Executive would target as a priority.

We have received a reply from Andy Kerr, dated 29 March. I am speaking slowly so that members have a chance to glance over his brief reply. The minister addresses the proposed Europass agency, which led to our original inquiry, but there is little reference to other agencies that might be on the horizon. One that comes to mind is the proposed defence procurement agency. Perhaps of even more relevance to Scotland is the agency for minority languages. Neither of those are mentioned in the minister's reply. All we have is a list of agencies and where they are currently based, and a little bit of information about the Europass agency.

Does any member wish to comment on the Executive's reply?

Paragraph 2 of the letter states:

"Also, pending a proposal from the European Commission, a Community Fisheries Control Agency is to be located in Spain."

What stage is that at and when do we expect the Commission to agree to it?

There is not a lot of information in the letter. I am not sure whether we are much further forward with the issue in which members expressed an interest.

Is it too late for Scotland to put in a bid for the new Community fisheries control agency, bearing in mind the importance of fishing to the Scottish economy? I would have thought that it would make good political and economic sense for the European Union to locate its various agencies in areas with a specific interest. I recognise that Spain has an interest in fishing, but the Scottish Executive should be active—indeed, proactive—in trying to have a fisheries agency located in Scotland.

The letter clearly states that the agency is to be located in Spain, which suggests that the decision has been made. However, if we decide to take further steps, we can find out the answer to that.

The letter says "pending a proposal".

Yes, on the location.

I presume that some of these agencies will have decentralised structures. The fact that an agency's headquarters is in one location would not preclude parts of it being located in different parts of the Community, in which case we should seek that where it would be appropriate.

Yes. I notice that the letter says of the Europass agency that

"it will be up to each Member State to decide on a location for their office."

That suggests that there will be some kind of decentralised structure. It strikes me that we are looking for a lot more information on the issue. We all have questions that are not answered in the letter.

It would be quite useful to have more information. It would also be interesting to know the history of our bids for agencies over the years. That would not involve an enormous amount of work and would be quite interesting background knowledge to have.

In the other papers, in a report on Council meetings, reference is made to Europass and the fact that quite a lot of deliberation is going on about it. Somebody has observed that Europass should not overlap with the nation state Europass agencies. The issue is obviously very much on-going, and no decisions have been made.

In discussing this type of thing, there is a slight risk of raking over things that we have failed to get in the past. This is a good example of areas in which we need advance information of what is coming so that we can get bids in early. It might be useful not only for the committee to engage in discussions with the Executive, but for the convener, the deputy convener and the clerk to get a briefing from the United Kingdom permanent representation to the European Union on what is coming through the system, so that we can get in early bids that would be genuinely relevant for Scotland.

That is what we asked for in our original letter.

Exactly.

This is not going to be very helpful, but I asked the First Minister that very question at the last question time before the Christmas holidays. However, I cannot for the life of me remember what he said. I suggest that the clerks fish out the Official Report of that meeting.

You have pre-empted my response to that. We will have to read the Official Report and see.

There are a couple of ways forward. Clearly, we want more answers. Like the committee, the Scottish Executive wants to secure agencies for Scotland. That is why a bid was put in to site the European Maritime Safety Agency in Glasgow, although it was unsuccessful. We can write back, asking for more information from the Scottish Executive and other appropriate authorities, or we can call people before the committee for half an hour or so, at one of our next meetings, to ask them questions on any strategy that might exist for securing agencies and to find out more answers. Those are two options. Do members have a preference? We could enter into more correspondence or put half an hour of a committee meeting aside and call ministers or the European Commission before the committee.

Going back to Dennis Canavan's comment, I think that we should focus on the Community fisheries control agency. He rightly talked about its importance to Scotland, but he then dropped in that he recognised its importance to Spain. Remembering the difficulties that we have had with the Spanish fleet, I think that it would be of great interest to hear about that. Anything that you could drop into a letter would be no bad thing.

I agree.

I back that up. We need more background on the status of the decision to tell us whether it is a proposal from the Commission or a final decision, and whether we should bid for it.

In that case, I suggest that we write to the Executive and the other appropriate authorities that we can identify to find out more information. We will put the matter on a future agenda as a separate item so that we can have a fuller discussion, and we will decide then whether to call witnesses. Is that agreed?

This is the sort of area in which we might get more information from informal soundings than from formal sessions. As a preliminary move, it would be helpful if you could have informal discussions and correspondence. Depending on the outcome of that, you can return to the committee with ideas for a hearing.

I will find out whatever I can and we will bring a paper to the meeting at which we discuss the matter as a separate agenda item.

The second item is an update on the visit by a delegation from the Czech Parliament on 26 to 29 April 2004, which of course is just a couple of days before their country joins the European Union. The committee has a continuing relationship with the Czech Parliament's Committee for European Integration, which I hope the visit will take a stage further. I see from the programme that the visit to Scotland lasts nearly a week; it is a full programme and the delegation is clearly enthusiastic about the visit. We will do our best to be good hosts.

On that point, the hospitality seems to be incredibly mean, even to an Aberdonian. We do not seem to be feeding the visitors with great regularity. Their first two evenings are free and there is no mention of a dinner—there is just a reception, and that is not good enough. Even if they have the first evening off, there should be a dinner.

On the reception, as the visit is pre-enlargement, it might be worth while to raise our sights a bit. We did that with Commonwealth day; we invited the high commissioners and, to our surprise, many of them came up from London specifically for the event because it was on a different day. We should approach some of the ambassadors and we should invite students from the accession countries who are studying at Scottish universities—or, rather, we should suggest that to the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, which is hosting the visit. There is no lunch listed for the visitors. They will go back as if they have been to a spa and lost weight.

Although you made a couple of valid points and we take on board your comments, I point out that the paper is just a rough outline. The clerks and the other departments in the Parliament are busy working on the visit. I assure you that the delegates will be provided with food somewhere along the line during their five-day visit—I put that on the record.

I am based in Edinburgh and I would be happy to help out on the Sunday and Monday evenings so that they are not left on their own.

Yes. I was lucky enough to be part of the Scottish Parliament delegation to Prague a year or two ago and we were treated very well, so I hope that we will return the favour.

I assume that the Czech consul in Edinburgh will be fully involved in the activities. He has been active in trying to build good relations with the Parliament and the European and External Relations Committee.

Yes. Paul Millar was pivotal in launching the programme and the visit, so he is at the heart of it.

We will take on board Keith Raffan's comments about involving other people in the receptions. It is in all our interests to build this up to be a good event, particularly the reception with the consular corps.

Given what we discussed at last week's meeting, could we ensure that they all get a miniature of Scottish Parliament whisky?

We will make sure that they do. I also remind members that they will participate in a committee meeting on the Tuesday—that will be innovative.