The Select Committee on
European Legislation has made further progress in the matter referred
to it and has agreed to the following Report:-
1.
We have given further consideration to the following on the
basis of further information from the Government. We maintain
our opinion[2]
that it raises questions of legal and political importance, and
continue to make no recommendation for its further consideration
at this stage:-
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT
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(17534)
10284/96
COM(96)455
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Draft Directive amending Directive 93/75/EEC on minimum requirements for vessels bound for and leaving Community ports and carrying dangerous or polluting goods.
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Legal base:
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Article 84(2); co-operation; qualified majority voting.
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Background
1.1 Directive 93/65/EEC
introduced a requirement for ships entering or leaving a port
in a Member State to report information on any dangerous or polluting
cargoes on board to the appropriate shore-based authorities.
The present proposal, which we last considered on 6 November,
is to amend the Directive and to extend its scope. At that time,
the Minister for Aviation and Shipping (Viscount Goschen) considered
that the proposed wording was insufficiently specific; he feared
that it could be interpreted as permitting amendments to be made
through the Committee procedure which would go beyond the scope
of the Directive. We asked the Minister to tell us, in due course,
how his concerns were to be met.
The revised proposal
1.2 We have not yet been
provided with the proposed revised wording, but in a letter of
28 February, the Minister says that it
"precludes the
possibility of potentially damaging amendments being introduced
and agreed through the Committee procedure. That procedure is
now confined to dealing with uncontroversial technical amendments
in line with international developments. Any future proposal
to amend the fundamental purpose of the Directive would need to
be submitted to the Council in the normal way."
He tells us that "Political
Agreement towards a Common Position" on this text was reached
at the meeting of the Transport Council "in December,"
(presumably 12-13 December).
Conclusion
1.3 We are glad to
learn that the Minister believes the previous problem to have
been resolved. We regret, however, that we have been invited
to reconsider this matter without benefit of a copy of the new
text, despite the fact that political agreement was reached more
than two months ago. We ask the Minister to provide us with the
text as soon as possible.
1.4 We are also disturbed
to be told that political agreement has been reached while the
proposal has not yet cleared Scrutiny. The Government has formally
agreed that the terms of the undertaking embodied in the Resolution
of 24 October 1990[3]
applies to the stage of political agreement[4].
It is therefore unfortunate that the Minister has given agreement
to this proposal after we had reported on it and not cleared it,
and we should welcome an explanation of how this occurred.
1.5 Furthermore, if
for some reason a Minister decides to agree to an uncleared proposal,
the Resolution of October 1990 commits him to providing us with
an explanation as soon as possible. In its Reply to our Report
on The Scrutiny of European Business, the Government agreed
that we "should normally be informed in writing by the Minister
concerned no later than two working days after the Council, and
in no case later than the Committee's next scrutiny meeting"[5].
In this case, the Minister's letter was sent more than two months
after the Transport Council. We should be grateful to know why
we were not informed sooner. We are not clearing the document
pending the Minister's reply.
2 (17534) 10284/96; see HC 36-ii (1996-97), paragraph 9 (6 November 1996). Back
3 Set out on p. iii of this Report. Back
4 See the letter from the Leader of the House, in our Twenty-Seventh Report of last Session, HC 51-xxvii (1995-96), p. lxxxv. See also paragraphs 157 and 158 of that Report. Back
5 First Special Report, HC 140 (1996-97), p viii, paragraph 7. Back
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