Saturday, 27th November 2010
Getting the most out of Europe
[Speech given to the SERN Annual Meeting, The Tun, Edinburgh, 26th November 2010]
I was asked to speak to you this morning about Scotland’s relationship with the EU institutions and in particular, the way in which my role as a Euro MP can help to influence EU legislation. Of course there has been a great change since the advent of the Lisbon Treaty. The entire Parliament is now legislative - or co-decision, as it is referred to. Previously, when I served for my first two mandates in the Fisheries and Agriculture Committees, they were merely consultative.
I well remember once in the Fisheries Committee when we were debating the reform of the CFP. We spent weeks working through a tortuous stack of amendments and when our reform package finally went for debate before the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Franz Fischler was the Commissioner. He opened the debate by referring to the 100 amendments submitted to his draft legislative proposal by the Fisheries Committee. “I reject 98 of the amendments,” he stated, “and I accept the first half of one of the remaining two and all of the final one!” Thus weeks of work was flushed down the loo in one fell stroke by the Commissioner. That was the way things worked pre-Lisbon. Now, that has all changed!
A Canadian student came to interview me recently. He is writing his thesis on the Lisbon Treaty and its impact on Fisheries Management in the EU. He told me that he had spoken already to 14 of the 27 permanent representation offices in Brussels. 12 of the 14 told him that they had previously ignored everything that had come from the Fisheries Committee. Because we were only consultative, everything we said was apparently irrelevant and went straight into the bin! And here was me thinking that we had been doing very important work all these years!
Now, the perm reps and indeed everyone else are desperate to find out what we do and how they can influence our decisions! The Parliament, the Commission and the Council now take decisions in trialogue. If all three cannot reach agreement, then we go into conciliation, where all three are represented and a compromise is thrashed out. If no agreement is reached in conciliation, the draft legislative proposal can fall.
A constant stream of lobbyists now beat a path to our door. This can be both time consuming and tedious. I used to be a lobbyist myself, before I entered parliament, so I know that single-issue consultants can add value to a topic and provide sound advice. But lobbyists should remember that MEPs don’t just sit in their offices all day waiting for them to knock on the door. We have huge constituencies to look after...the whole of Scotland in our case. We spend three weeks in Brussels and one week in Strasbourg every month. That means we have to do constituency work at the weekends, travelling from Gretna to John O’Groats and even out to the islands as part of our regular duties.
In Brussels we have to attend committee and group meetings. I am senior vice president of the Fisheries Committee which generally meets for 10 to 12 hours monthly. I am a supplementary member of the Environment Committee which meets for up to 15 hours monthly. Our group meetings can absorb another 6 or 7 hours a month, because that is where we take political decisions on how we will vote on key issues. I am required to brief all of the other Members of the ECR Group on fisheries matters. I also help to draw up our voting list prior to fisheries committee and plenary sessions.
In addition, I am regularly appointed as a rapporteur or shadow rapporteur on various topics in either the Fisheries or Environment Committee. That involves a vast amount of additional work, liaising with other shadow rapporteurs, seeking to compromise or get agreement on key amendments and preparing detailed reports for submission to committees.
The time available for meeting lobbyists is therefore severely truncated and yet the demands, particularly since Lisbon, continue to mount. Glancing at a typical week in my diary last month, I can tell you that over 3 days in Brussels I had to meet our own ECR group official responsible for fisheries, to draw up a voting list. I met fisheries and cohesion funding representatives from the Scottish government. I met a delegation from COSLA. I chaired a meeting of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq. I had a preparatory meeting with EP officials from the secretariat of the Fisheries Committee prior to chairing the committee itself for 6 hours. I met a lobbyist from the hydrogen industry, a lobbyist on behalf of animal testing scientists and attended a briefing by EU TV networks. I had a working lunch with leaders of Scotland’s fisheries sector, met a senior official from the BBC and had dinner with the Ambassador from Tajikistan. I met a director from CEMEX. A group of people concerned about human rights in the Balkans and had a one hour phonecall with the fisheries minister in London.
Flying back to Scotland on the Thursday afternoon, I landed in Edinburgh, drove to Troon to speak at a Conservative constituency function. Drove next morning to Aberdeen to meet Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki and UK Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon and Scottish Fisheries Minister Richard Lochhead. I spent Saturday at home and then flew to Birmingham on the Sunday morning to attend our Party Conference. In-between times, I wrote two speeches, one newspaper article and two press releases. I also did three TV interviews.
And that is a fairly typical week!
So, having told you how hard we work and how hard-pressed we are, let me outline how best you can influence the decision-making process.
Firstly, you must identify the key decision-makers in the European Parliament. They must be your primary target. Start with the rapporteurs. If you are desperate to influence a new draft legislative proposal that has emerged from the European Commission, you must find out who has been appointed as the main rapporteur, in which committee he or she is dealing with the issue, which political group he or she belongs to and also, the names of each of the shadow rapporteurs.
Clearly the political allegiance of a rapporteur will have a key input to their final report. You need to take that into account and seek the ear of shadow rapporteurs from the political groups whom you think may have the best chance of supporting your views. Now you have to try to submit your point of view, either in a face to face meeting, or by email or letter, in as succinct a way as possible. Don’t send vast pamphlets and catalogues to back-up you theory. They will never be read. Keep it short and snappy and you have more chance of success.
Next, urge your local constituency MEP or MEPs to support your proposal or to table amendments on your behalf. If your proposal is particularly controversial, you may wish to send a short letter to the President of the Committee that is dealing with it. You may also wish to ask your MEP to organise a video conference, working breakfast, meeting or even a hearing before the full committee, where your views can be put across. This, I must stress, is only used where matters are of critical importance or high controversy, such as the reform of the CAP.
There are also a number of Intergroups in the European Parliament that can be a useful vehicle for debate. Intergroups are ad-hoc bodies set up by MEPs and used to interface with EU citizens and NGOs. I am president of the Climate Change, Biodiversity & Sustainable Development Intergroup, which is the largest in the EP with over 200 MEP members. We have a series of working groups covering everything rom Transport and energy to fisheries and agriculture. Each working group has its own MEP chair. Our intergroup holds regular conferences, hearings and seminars in the EP and normally we will manage to get an appropriate Commissioner to attend as a keynote speaker. We time our conferences to fit in with the legislative cycle so that we can endeavour to influence key proposals while they are still making their way through the legislative process.
Finally, there is the much over-used system of Written Declarations, where an MEP or Group of MEPs from different political groups and different Member States, can lodge a formal declaration calling on the EP, the Council and the Commission to support a specific policy proposal. Once lodged, the declaration remains available for signature for a period of 4 months. If during that time it receives more than half the signatures of the entire EP, it is sent by the President of the European Parliament to the European Commission with a request that they produce a piece of draft legislation reflecting the will of the majority of MEPs.
Written Declarations can be a bit of a 2-edged sword, however. If, after four months, you have failed to gain a majority of MEPs’ signatures, the Commission and Council will conclude that there is no parliamentary support for your proposal and it will be quietly ditched. It takes a lot of work, therefore to ensure you gain the majority of MEPs’# signatures, without hacking them off by being too pushy in the meantime!
Finally, let me say that there are also some positive aspects to the Lisbon Treaty dealing with the question of subsidiarity. For instance there is now a mandatory requirement that all draft legislative proposals coming from the Commission must be communicated simultaneously to the European Parliament and to each of the 27 EU Member States. The Member States will then have a statutory 8 week period during which they can submit their considered opinions to the EU. No decisions can be taken on any legislative proposal until this statutory consultation has been conducted.
This new Treaty requirement opens up a whole field of subsidiarity which didn't exist before. It means that Member States and interest groups will really be able to have their say on key directives and regulations coming out of Brussels. But in reality, the 8 week consultation period is very tight. Just think how it might work in our case? The Commission will send their legislative proposal to the UK government at Westminster. The relevant Department at Whitehall will then examine the proposal and if it deals with one of the devolved subjects like agriculture or fisheries, they will send it on to Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont. The devolved parliaments or Assemblies will then scrutinise it in committee and perhaps even consult with stakeholders like the trades unions, chambers of commerce, NFU or fishermen's associations. Can all of this be achieved within 8 weeks? I doubt it!
Clearly we need to set up a new streamlined system of consultation if the UK is to make full use of this new subsidiarity principle and get the most out of Lisbon. We need teams of civil servants watching what is coming over the horizon, so that the wider stakeholder consultation on pending legislative proposals can be conducted long before the 8 week formal consultation process begins. There is one thing for sure....we need to have a much better co-ordination between our MPs, MSPs and MEPs to ensure that we get the maximum benefit from the Lisbon Treaty and don't become Europe's losers.
STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP
