House of Commons - European Scrutiny

Select Committee on European Scrutiny Eighth Report

The Committee's work in 2003

1. This is our second annual report. As well as setting out what we did during the past year, it reports on changes made to increase the effectiveness of scrutiny.[1]

2. Our core task, on behalf of the House, is to examine each EU document deposited, to assess its legal and political importance and to determine whether it is debated. 1080 documents were examined during 2003,[2] 535 were deemed of legal and/or political importance, and 48 were recommended for debate[3] — 43 in European Standing Committee and five on the floor of the House. Of the latter, two related to fisheries[4] and three to the Common Agricultural Policy. One debate took place on the floor (on the CAP documents) and 26 in standing committee (in some cases covering several documents). We agreed 33 weekly reports.[5] We did not in 2003 use our power to seek an opinion on a document from another select committee.

3. An important aspect of the year was our continuing scrutiny of the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe, which produced a draft constitutional treaty intended to replace the existing treaties,[6] and subsequently the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC), which has the final say in the matters considered by the Convention. We produced two Reports, entitled The Convention on the Future of Europe and the role of national parliaments and The Convention's proposals on criminal justice. The Report we produced in 2002 (entitled Democracy and accountability in the EU and the role of national parliaments) was debated in Westminster Hall on 30 January 2003, together with the Government's reply. We also took evidence twice from the Foreign Secretary, once each from the Government's representative on the Convention and the Minister for Europe, and twice from Ministers in other Departments about the potential effects of the draft treaty on their areas of responsibility. We were active in the Standing Committee on the Convention and its successor, the Standing Committee on the Inter-Governmental Conference, on both of which we, together with the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, have been ex officio members.

4. As last year, we took much more oral evidence than in the years before 2002. We took oral evidence 13 times, as follows:

4 Inquiry into the Convention's proposals on criminal justice.

6 The Convention, the IGC and the draft constitutional treaty (not including the sessions relating to criminal justice)[7]

2 Specific documents (on racism and xenophobia and on reform of the Common Fisheries Policy)

1 The Commission's Annual Work Programme

5. We made four overseas visits: two to countries about to take over the EU Presidency (Italy and Ireland), in one of these cases also visiting a nearby state about to join the EU (Malta); one to Paris; and one to Strasbourg and Luxembourg. The purpose of the latter was to hold meetings with members of the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the European Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors in Luxembourg. The Paris visit is discussed below. A list of the meetings and the subjects discussed during these visits is annexed to this Report.

6. Last year's annual report discussed six areas in which we had made or hoped to make changes which would improve the effectiveness of scrutiny. In two of these areas not much happened in 2003: relations with the public, though we note a slight but welcome increase in the number of submissions to us from organisations outside Government; and the form of debates on EU documents, though here we note the Leader of the House's interest in "mainstreaming" European scrutiny in the House's work and the Foreign Secretary's recent comments suggesting that the Commission's Annual Work Programme could be considered in a successor to the Standing Committee on the IGC.[8] The other four areas are examined below.

The working of the scrutiny system

7. Whereas in 2002 we called Ministers before us four times to explain breaches without good cause of the House's scrutiny reserve resolution (which prohibits Ministers from agreeing proposals in the Council which have not cleared parliamentary scrutiny),[9] we did not consider it necessary to do so at all in 2003. This, we believe, reflects the greater importance which Ministers now attach to the scrutiny reserve resolution and the special attention now given by the Cabinet Office to EU documents it identifies as likely to cause scrutiny problems. We received the first of the planned six-monthly lists of scrutiny reserve breaches — another sign of the care now being taken within Government over such breaches. We are grateful to the Cabinet Office and departmental scrutiny units for their efforts in this area. Of course, there remain too many occasions when EU Presidencies seek to rush through proposals without allowing time for parliamentary scrutiny, and we would wish to see the Government protesting to the Presidency in these cases.

8. The debates we have recommended have generally been held promptly. At the end of the year 11 were outstanding, of which seven were recommended in December; of the four earlier recommendations, one has been awaiting referral of an additional document and two recommended in November have since taken place.

9. In 2003, for the second time, we took evidence from Commission witnesses on the Commission's Annual Work Programme, in order to be able to examine the Commission's proposals at an early stage. We have also been considering what scrutiny there should be of the European Council's "Multiannual Strategic Programme", the first of which was agreed in December 2003. On this occasion, neither programme contained much that was new, reflecting the fact that 2004 will see European Parliament elections and the appointment of a new Commission, but the programmes published in 2004 probably will contain significant new proposals.

10. We have begun to pay closer attention to the use made by the Community of Article 308 in the EC Treaty, which provides that "If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain, in the course of the operation of the common market, one of the objectives of the Community and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council shall … take the appropriate measures". We thank the Cabinet Office for agreeing immediately we raised the matter to provide instructions to Departments that in the Explanatory Memoranda they send us they should always explain the justification for using Article 308.

11. Unusual scrutiny issues arose in March in connection with draft agreements between the EU and the United States over extradition and mutual legal assistance. Although the Council had postponed consideration to allow national parliaments time to consider the draft agreements, the documents were at first available only on a confidential basis. Since texts of international agreements are not normally laid before Parliament until signed, provision of confidential texts at an earlier stage can provide an opportunity which is not usually available to comment before final agreement. On this occasion we took that opportunity and commented informally, reporting formally to the House later when the documents ceased to be regarded as confidential.[10] We also joined with the Lords Committee in pressing the Presidency to lift the confidential classification. We emphasise that consideration of a confidential document cannot replace the normal process of consideration of a deposited document and a report to the House.

12. We are still awaiting a reply from the Cabinet Office to our letter about improving the scrutiny procedures for documents subject to the co-decision process and conciliation.

13. Streamlining of the scrutiny system by the provision of regular lists of certain categories of documents we rarely if ever find to be of legal or political importance, instead of their having to be deposited, has been implemented.

14. In December we asked the Leader of the House to change the House's standing orders so that we could meet in public when deliberating (instead of, as now, being able to meet in public only when taking oral evidence). He is consulting the Procedure and Liaison Committees before providing a substantive answer.

Pre- and post-Council scrutiny

15. The main development in this area is that the IGC is understood to have agreed that the Council should meet in public as a matter of course when legislating, though of course this has not yet been incorporated in an agreed treaty, and much will depend on the detailed arrangements and rules. We have been pressing in particular for an official transcript of such meetings. Public meetings of the Council when legislating have great potential to increase the effectiveness of our pre- and post-Council scrutiny, as well as ministerial accountability generally.

16. We have noted an improvement in the quality of Departments' written answers to our questions about Council meetings. These now routinely inform us about the stances adopted by the UK Government.

Parliamentary networking

17. Great progress has been made in reforming COSAC, the organisation which brings together delegations from the European affairs committees of national parliaments and the European Parliament. The reform process was initiated by an addition proposed by the UK delegation to the COSAC "contribution" in May 2003 and was energetically taken up by the Danish presidency. A small permanent secretariat is to start work in January, and new rules have been agreed allowing COSAC "contributions" to be agreed by a three-quarters majority instead of unanimity and providing for the main business on each draft agenda to be derived from COSAC's role as a body for enhancing national parliamentary scrutiny by exchanging information (especially on the practical aspects of parliamentary scrutiny). We are grateful for the work of the Danish, Greek and Italian Presidencies in bringing this about, and for the willingness of delegations to make difficult compromises. We will now seek to make use of the opportunities offered by these changes to improve inter-parliamentary co-operation and the sharing of experience.

18. In February 2003, for the first time, we held an informal meeting at Westminster with UK MEPs, to which members of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union and its sub-committees and members of relevant departmental select committees were also invited. Attendance was good, and there was a general view that such meetings should be held on a regular basis, sometimes in Brussels, covering major policy areas subject to co-decision. A second meeting was held in October, at which Structural Funds and the environment were discussed.

19. We wish to increase our bilateral links with our counterpart committees, and have always taken the opportunity provided by our visits to Presidency and applicant countries to do so, most recently in Ireland. In 2003, for the first time, we made an overseas visit for this specific purpose, meeting our colleagues in the Assemblée Nationale in Paris for what proved to be an extremely useful meeting. We are grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Valletta, Paris and Dublin for their hospitality in 2003. We have also been pleased to welcome parliamentarians from Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland (all countries about to join the EU) and from France for meetings at Westminster.

20. For various reasons, including elections in Scotland and Wales and the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Chairmen of the two European committees at Westminster and the three in the devolved assemblies did not hold their regular liaison meetings in 2003, but these have been resumed in January 2004.

Role of national parliaments in the EU

21. The Convention's draft constitutional treaty includes provision for the Commission or Council to reconsider proposed European legislation if a third of national parliaments or their chambers object to it on grounds of non-compliance with the principle of subsidiarity. This has not needed to be further discussed at the IGC, and is likely to form part of any new treaty eventually agreed. Although we would have liked a stronger mechanism, allowing a third of national parliaments or their chambers to block a proposal, we recognise the significance of giving national parliaments for the first time a formal role in the EU's legislative process. We have already begun consultation within the House and with committees in the devolved assemblies about how the subsidiarity mechanism should be implemented by the House.

22. The draft treaty includes a "passerelle" clause (which we strongly oppose), under which the European Council, acting unanimously, can move an area of EU activity from unanimity to qualified majority voting (or from special legislative procedure to ordinary legislative procedure).[11] The Italian Presidency added to it a provision that a single national parliament can veto any such decision by the European Council. We will need to consider how this too should be implemented in the UK if it comes into effect.

Plans for 2004