As the convener of the European and External Relations Committee, I am pleased to open the debate on our annual report of the EU engagement and scrutiny of the committees of the Scottish Parliament. The debate shows that Scottish parliamentarians take EU matters very seriously. I was pleased to see that the range, variety and depth of other committees’ reports to our committee this year reflect that fact.
My committee leads on the Parliament’s EU strategy for committees. We act as a mainstreaming hub, actively encouraging our fellow committees to strengthen their work with a wider European context and to engage early with EU issues that are of importance to Scotland. This year, we have again been successful in that aim, and I will outline briefly how we have achieved that. Before I do so, I sincerely thank the other eight participating committees for their on-going engagement and their reports to my committee. I also pay tribute to the clerks of the European and External Relations Committee for the work that they do, which has been very intense over the past year.
Since our previous debate, we have had elections for the European Parliament, in May 2014. In late 2014, we saw the formation of the new college of commissioners in the European Commission led by President Juncker, who presented a new-look, streamlined Commission work programme for 2015. Looking ahead, the United Kingdom elections campaign has featured EU issues more than ever before, not least in the context of the possibility of an in/out referendum. Given that backdrop, I am glad that we have this opportunity to share how we and other parliamentary committees have engaged with EU issues over the past year and what our future EU scrutiny priorities are.
This will be our last such debate for the current parliamentary session, so we asked other committees about their engagement on EU policies in 2014 and their plans for 2015 until the end of this session in early 2016. We did not realise that the end was coming so quickly, did we? We asked committees to identify their priorities in three main areas: the Europe 2020 agenda, the Scottish Government’s “Action Plan on European Engagement” and the European Commission’s work programme.
I will focus on the “Commission Work Programme 2015. A New Start”—or the CWP 2015 as it is known in the Europhile community—including my committee’s consideration of its new approach. The CWP 2015 approach is to focus on a limited number of 23 new initiatives for 2015, which is a lower number than was the case under the previous college of commissioners. Additionally, the new Commission proposes to withdraw 80 pending pieces of legislation.
In order to scrutinise and better understand the implications of the new approach, the European and External Relations Committee took evidence directly from the Commission. We were told that it wanted to focus on priorities and results, and to invest in proposals that would have the biggest impact on jobs and growth.
We also took the opportunity to ask how the new Commission was connecting with European citizens and making its work accessible and comprehensible. We heard that work was being undertaken to make the Commission website more accessible—I am sure that Willie Coffey will be delighted with that—as well as other initiatives to make its work much more transparent.
The Commission acknowledged that it
“needs to take measures to restore trust.”—[Official Report, European and External Relations Committee, 22 January 2015; c 15.]
Our committee entirely agrees with that sentiment. In our report, we have asked the Commission to keep us updated on how it progresses in that area. I hope that a future European and External Relations Committee will report on that very progress.
Given last year’s changes in the Commission and the streamlined nature of its work programme for 2015, there were fewer opportunities this year for committees to engage with the work programme. I am sure that that will change in the five years of the new Commission as more initiatives and policies are rolled out, which we can then scrutinise.
We gathered useful evidence from various perspectives so that we could report to Parliament on what team Scotland collectively thinks are the priorities for Scotland in the CWP 2015. I thank all those who gave us their views and insights, namely all six of Scotland’s MEPs, the Scottish Government and, finally—not forgetting—Stewart Maxwell and Patricia Ferguson. In particular, I thank Stewart Maxwell, with his Scottish Parliament member of the Committee of the Regions hat on, for his report to our committee, which was insightful and helpful.
In summary, we heard that the CWP initiatives important for Scotland included the digital single market, the energy union, the internal market, the capital markets union and the transatlantic trade and investment partnership, widely known as TTIP. I will pick out just one of those areas—the digital single market initiative—to give members a flavour of the work that our committee has done on the CWP. I will return to TTIP later to explain the more detailed work that the committee has been doing.
The committee has followed the digital single market initiative avidly for some time. I pay tribute in particular to Willie Coffey, who has never allowed an opportunity to be lost to raise the issue at a committee meeting. I commend him for his insightful work on that area, too. We were keen to seek assurance from the Commission that the digital single market initiative would improve issues in Scotland, such as bringing uniform broadband coverage to remote areas such as the Highlands and Islands. I am sure that Jamie McGrigor would be delighted to hear that, too—the issue is a hobby-horse of his that he likes to keep pressing.
We highlighted our concerns that the final EU budget agreed by the Council and the European Parliament reduced the connecting Europe facility budget, which could impact on the digital agenda.
The Commission told us that its new investment plan was intended to provide funding for projects such as rural broadband, and that the new plan would not mean less money for digital infrastructure. As members can imagine, we were quite interested in that. However, we noted in our report that we are not entirely satisfied with the level of information that is available from the Commission on the aims of the digital single market. Given the importance of the issue to Scotland, I would like to reassure the Parliament that our committee will continue to monitor any key developments and to assess how the digital single market might benefit Scotland.
I turn to other areas of importance for the Parliament’s committees. Some committees have declared their intention to consider aspects of the Europe 2020 strategy, which is the EU’s 10-year strategy for boosting sustainable economic growth and creating new jobs. As in previous years, committees can input directly into the strategy via the Scottish Government’s national reform programme, which sets out the distinct approach that is being taken in Scotland.
Similarly, the relevant committees will be considering the priorities identified in “Scotland’s Action Plan for EU Engagement”, in which the Scottish Government describes its focus in four main areas: being a committed EU partner; promoting EU reform; participating actively; and strengthening partnerships.
In summary, we can see how the work of the committees on the EU scrutinises both the bigger picture of the CWP and the specific Scottish perspective on EU initiatives.
I will not dwell on the specific topics that each committee has prioritised, which will undoubtedly be covered by colleagues from those committees, and I know that Hanzala Malik, our deputy convener, will reflect on colleagues’ contributions. Instead, I would like to highlight briefly some of my committee’s main areas of work in 2014 and thus far in 2015.
Our recent inquiry on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership—TTIP—was of great interest. The inquiry was held against a backdrop of the many discussion events on TTIP more generally that various organisations throughout Scotland, including the trade unions and the active group from the University of St Andrews, organised. I was very pleased to host one such event recently here in the Parliament that was organised by the Hansard Society on behalf of the European Parliament. It was sold out very quickly, and it involved a roomful of active and well-informed participants. There is so much heated public engagement on TTIP that we thought it only right to request a chamber debate on the issue, which I believe will take place very soon.
As I am sure that colleagues will be well aware, TTIP is a trade agreement that is being negotiated by the EU and the USA. In fact, the ninth round of negotiations is taking place right now in New York—it began on 20 April and will go on until 24 April. The key issues that our committee heard evidence on included the transparency of the negotiations, which is an extremely important aspect; the economic benefits of any agreement; the potential inclusion of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism; and the impact of TTIP on public services.
Moving on to a different topic, in 2014 we began a major four-part inquiry entitled “Connecting Scotland: how Scotland can engage most effectively in a globalising world”. We have already taken evidence from representatives of the Catalan, Basque and Flemish Governments to give us a wider perspective. The next phase of the inquiry will involve us considering how non-governmental and third sector organisations in Scotland engage in the EU and internationally. We will talk to a wide range of organisations from the third sector, local government, civil society and universities and colleges to find out what they do.
I hope that the Parliament finds our report to be of interest, and I look forward to hearing colleagues’ thoughts and views on all EU subject areas.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the European and External Relations Committee’s 1st Report, 2015 (Session 4): EU engagement and scrutiny of the Committees of the Scottish Parliament on European Union policies 2015-16 (SP Paper 690).
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