Meeting summary: Wednesday 18 June 2014

The Committee considered the following documents:

Strategic guidelines for EU Justice and Home Affairs to 2020

Previously recommended for debate on the floor of the House

The forthcoming European Council on 26-27 June is expected to agree a successor set of justice and home affairs strategic guidelines to replace the Stockholm Programme, which expires at the end of 2014.  The Committee recommended on 9 April that the Commission’s contribution — which takes the form of two Communications (one covering justice matters, the other home affairs) — should be debated on the floor of the House to allow all Members, and specifically those of the Home Affairs and Justice Select Committees, to inform the Government’s position. We said that the debate should be held before the House prorogued in May, ahead of the discussion planned at the Justice and Home Affairs Council in early June.  We are astonished that a recent joint letter on the guidelines from Home and Justice Ministers makes no reference to the outstanding debate recommendation and provides no commitment to scheduling a debate in the short period before the 26-27 June Council.  We are also highly critical that a letter from the Greek Presidency to the President of the European Council purporting to summarise the views of EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers on the future strategic guidelines is limited and therefore cannot be published.   We conclude that:

“The lack of a public record of the contribution made by EU Justice and Home Affairs Minsters—each individually responsible for negotiating draft legislation and implementing it domestically—is testimony to the distance yet to be travelled by the EU institutions (notably, the Council) in developing more open and transparent governance structures which are open to public scrutiny.” 

Reform of the EU’s Staff Regulations

Previously recommended for debate in European Committee B

The Committee referred a draft Regulation amending the Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of other Servants of the European Union for debate in October 2013; the proposal came into force on 1 January 2014. The debate has yet to take place and the Minister now writes to update the Committee on the reforms achieved through the negotiations, which he considers disappointing.  He writes that he regrets that it was not possible to achieve a greater reduction in costs and that the reform to the exception clause means there is now no political alternative to the formulaic salary adjustment in times of financial crisis but that the UK Government will continue to champion reforms through the annual budget process. As the Minister does not deal in sufficient detail with the questions on cost and the lack of success in negotiations that we raised in previous Reports we look forward to hearing from the Minister on these points when the debate eventually takes place.

High-speed electronic communication networks

The Committee returned to a Draft Council Regulation on measures to reduce the cost of deploying high-speed electronic communications, on which we first reported in April 2013 and on which a Reasoned Opinion (RO) was debated and issued in May 2013. The Government initially told us that it was opposed to the proposal as a Regulation was overly prescriptive, would increase cost burdens on business, government and regulators, undermine local and national practices and could act as a disincentive to network investment in remote areas – precisely those areas it was intended to target.  The Committee recommended a debate on an RO as we considered that the draft Regulation breached the subsidiarity principle: the objective could be achieved at Member State level as there was no cross-border element; the stated cost reductions were questionable; and a more flexible Directive would be preferable. The RO was debated and adopted.  We now report that the Commission have changed the legislative form to a Directive, an outcome of which both we and the Government approve. However, we find the handling of scrutiny on this document has been unacceptable as the Government has failed to update the Committee on progress for 14 months and has now done so only at our prompting. The Minister’s letter is cursory and general; so we ask him to write again in response to our concerns, as previously set-out, on the roll-out of high speed broadband as well as setting out how this scrutiny lapse came to pass, and what steps the Department has taken to ensure it cannot happen again.

Other documents reported

We are also reporting on documents relating to:

• Business, Innovation and Skills: Undeclared work;
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office: The EU Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Crossing Point; EU Special Representative to Kosovo; EU Strategy in Afghanistan; The EU and Ukraine;
•  Health: Organ donation and transplantation;
•  HM Treasury: Stability and Growth Pact and European Semester; 2011 and 2012 salary and pension adjustments for EU staff;
• Home Office: The development of the second generation Schengen Information System;
• International Development: The private sector and inclusive and sustainable growth;
• Transport: Carbon dioxide emissions.

The Committee’s Second Report will be published on 20 June, covering: the European Semester; Regulation of new psychoactive substances; The EU and Georgia: the EU and Moldova; Competition Policy 2013; Driftnet fishing; the EU’s Special Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina; EU Special Representative in Afghanistan; A European Union maritime security strategy; The EU and Central African Republic; Effective, accessible and resilient health systems; Financial services: bank accounts; Financial services: credit rating agencies; Financial services: securities financing transactions and resilience of credit institutions; EU Budget: the UK correction; Financial services: long term investment funds; Money laundering and terrorist financing; Establishing the EU’s position within the International Labour Organisation.