Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2000
RT HON
ROBIN COOK
MP, MR EMYR
JONES PARRY
CMG AND MR
KIM DARROCH
280. Can I take it then that you would support
pan-European parties operating in relation to the European parliamentary
elections and it would not relate to your party or mine operating
in European elections within the United Kingdom?
(Mr Cook) I am not sure I would narrow the definition
down solely to participation in European parliamentary elections,
but it is the case that I think all three parties represented
around this table have sister parties and umbrella groups for
their sister parties throughout the European Union, and in this
the Conservative Party is no different from us. The EPP has always
supported exactly the same requests for a party statute that we
have, indeed the letter to the Commission was signed jointly by
the leaders of all the different parties. But this is not the
creation of a European party to which individual citizens would
subscribe, what this is is the umbrella group for the different
national parties.
281. Could I ask you to deal with the two areas
which perhaps do fall within the area you said the Government
would not allow QMV on, one is social security and the other is
tax? There are different drafts of the tax proposal around but
one of them does talk about measures to co-ordinate the provisions
of Member States to prevent discrimination and double taxation;
measures to prevent fraud and tax evasion; the exchange of information.
These go really quite a long way and it does bring within the
unanimity provision of Article 93 provisions relating to direct
taxation. I know that is unanimity and not QMV but it is the first
time, as far as I know, that direct taxation has been sought to
be brought within Community competence, and is that not the thin
edge of the wedge? I wonder if you could deal with both of those
issues, direct taxation and QMV for indirect taxation?
(Mr Cook) First of all, as a general principle, we
are taking the position in this IGC that we are not in favour
of the extension of Commission competence and therefore, although
I have not discussed that specific point recently with my Treasury
colleagues, I would be very surprised if we did not take a position
against direct taxation becoming part of competence. I can write
to the Committee to clarify that. On the issue of the procedure
of decision-making, we will be very robust in insisting on unanimity
on all tax matters, embracing also the matter of tax fraud which,
as you rightly say, are rather widely drawn, and we would not
wish to create a situation in which with ingenuity it could be
used to affect the tax position of any national country.
282. The final question I want to ask is about
social security where it is proposed to extend qualified majority
voting to Article 42, to the co-ordination of national laws in
the field of social security. It goes on in other areas in the
current draft, as it did previously, to say that although in Article
251 it should be by unanimity—it is not proposing as I understand
it this be done by QMV—it should extend to the co-ordination
of national laws. Does this fall within the Government's policy
of not acceding to QMV in areas of social security?
(Mr Cook) I am happy to say, yes. It is one of the
five areas we identified at the beginning of the proceedings where
we would not believe that the application of majority voting would
be appropriate. Lest I be thought to be too negative, perhaps
I can end by saying, for balance, that actually the number of
areas where we have strong views in those 50 are not actually
much out of line with those of other countries, indeed France
has a broadly similar number of objections, which complicates
their role in the presidency.
Mr Chidgey
283. Foreign Secretary, I would like to ask
you a couple of questions about the mechanics of this process,
the re-weighting. Then I have a question about the transparency
of the operations of the Council of Ministers in this regard.
It has been reported that although a final decision on weighting
will be left to EU leaders in Nice, most delegations have agreed
in principle that future decisions taken by QMV should reflect
the support of at least half the EU's population and half its
Member States, and that officials will now work to prepare options
along these lines. I am sure you are aware that on the decisions
where QMV currently applies a threshold of 71 per cent is required
to reach agreement, and over time as the European Union has expanded
the percentage of population needed to reach that threshold has
dropped from around 70 per cent when it was founded to around
58 per cent today and we are now looking at a scenario that with
28 Member States that could fall to below 50 per cent, so consequently
it would appear that officials are working along the lines of
preserving a 50 per cent minimum. Is the Government happy with
that or does the Government seek to get closer to the original
concept of a simple majority?
(Mr Cook) That is not our starting point. Our starting
point is that there has to be a substantial simple re-weighting
of the votes of the larger countries and that there has to be
a clearer approximation between the votes in the Council and the
populations of the countries. Nobody is asking that it should
be pro rata. That would be not to pay sufficient attention to
the status of the Member States as Member States. We need to get
the balance right.
284. Are you in favour of double majority?
(Mr Cook) No. We have never ruled out double majority
but that is also not our starting point because if you go for
the double majority then that will have the effect on most models
presented of reducing the level of increasing simple re-weighting.
In other words, we are not willing to trade off the increase in
Britain's vote in exchange for a dual voting system which will
also count populations. Of course, if we could get a satisfactory
outcome on the simple re-weighting of our vote then we would not
have any national reason for opposing dual majority, but we are
not going to lobby for that in circumstances where it might blunt
our number one priority which is to get an increase in our vote.
285. My second question is in the context of
core beliefs and objectives of institutional reform. You probably
recall, Foreign Secretary, that earlier this year a joint paper
was issued in which the Government agreed that "we"
(as the Government) "also believe that to be properly accountable
the Council of Ministers must be open and transparent. We therefore
favour publication of all votes when the Council of Ministers
is acting in a legislative capacity". My question to you
is, when can we expect to see signs of the Government following
that agreement?
(Mr Cook) If you mean honouring it, pressing for it,
we continue to do so. If by honouring it you mean achieving agreement
to it, I have to say we are not yet there and there are quite
a number of other countries who do not necessarily share our commitment.
286. Would you agree, if you could get the agreement
with the other countries, that when the Council is acting as legislature,
when those meetings are held they should be held in public and
there should be full reports on the proceedings of those meetings
and that votes should be published and that within a fixed deadline
ministers should actually be obliged to explain how they intend
to implement domestically the legislation that has been agreed
in the Council?
(Mr Cook) I totally agree with the last point and
that of course is a matter for national parliaments. Secondly,
if we could secure our objective, which is a more transparent
recording of votes and the publication of those votes, that then
would go some way to meeting your concern. Opening up the meetings
to being held in public would make it often, I am afraid, more
difficult to secure the agreement. In the course of the end game
there is inevitably a requirement to compromise which might be
more difficult if it were taking place under the public gaze as
it is actually done. Here there is a very difficult task to be
made in getting the right balance between transparency and the
need to get the decisions taken. At the moment we do not think
we have made sufficient progress on transparency to press for
it.
Sir John Stanley
287. Foreign Secretary, in one of your replies
to Mr Maples I thought you gave the Committee the impression that
the Government's commitment to preserving unanimity was in five
areas when, as I understand the Government's position, it is in
fact in six. In the Government's response to the Committee's report,
Developments at the Intergovernmental Conference 2000,
you say, "The Government has made it clear that it will not
agree to QMV for tax, social security, treaty change, own resources,
border controls and defence".
(Mr Cook) You are quite right. I had forgotten about
the own resources. Those are the ones we listed both in the White
Paper and in my statement to the House, and I am happy to correct
that one.
288. Thank you. Could you therefore confirm
to the Committee that in each of those six areas the British Government
will if necessary use its right of veto at Nice to ensure that
unanimity is preserved in those six areas?
(Mr Cook) We are not going to agree to majority voting
in those areas. Can I just say a word about language? In the context
of what will be a very protracted discussion in negotiation in
Nice, in which France has set aside two whole days for this and
suggested that we should be ready for three whole days if necessary
to get to the end of it, it will not actually be the case that
at any point the President will press a buzzer and ask who is
going to cast a veto. It does not operate like that. We will be
making it plain that we cannot agree and the discussion will continue
until we can move on.
289. In relation to the remaining items of the
50 or so that have been referred to you previously said to the
Committee, and it is again reflected in your response to the Committee's
report, that "but in all other areas"—that is,
in all the other areas over and above the six we have referred
to—"we support the case by case approach adopted by
the Portuguese Presidency". Am I right therefore in thinking
that the case by case approach will be adopted in relation to
all the remaining areas and that the British Government holds
itself in principle ready to concede QMV in any of the remaining
areas apart from the six to which we have referred?
(Mr Cook) No, that would be false. The six that we
identified then are those where we established bottom lines on
which we did not think that any majority voting would be appropriate
since they are so central to the prerogatives and decisions of
national governments and their parliaments. But that does not
mean that you can adopt what would be a false corollary, that
anything outside those areas we are willing to sign up to. As
I said earlier, we have our reservations about the majority of
those listed there and many of them go well into very different
fields from the ones that we quite properly listed as our six
bottom lines.
290. That being the case, Foreign Secretary,
could I ask you—and I certainly wholly understand the importance
of any government going into an international negotiation quite
properly wishing to hold its full negotiating position to itself—whether
the British Government intend, prior to Nice to indicate which
of the other areas outside the six but within the 50 or so which
are possibly up for QMV it has already decided it is not prepared
to see move from unanimity to QMV, for example, in the forthcoming
debate this week?
(Mr Cook) I am not sure that in my speech as I developed
my speech in the House I went through each of the 50 different
articles, but we regularly exchange with our partners our views
on each of those. We have a number of discussions still coming
up in which we will repeat our position on those. You did, quite
generously and correctly, Sir John, touch on the difficulty in
going too public and too precise in public on this. This is a
negotiation and it is not, if I can just make this point of correction,
a case that on those where we are going to agree to qualified
majority voting we are ready to concede majority voting. In some
of them we ourselves are pressing for majority voting, for instance,
on the question of freedom of movement of professionals, recognition
of professional qualifications. A number of British employee organisations
are pressing us to secure this because they see it as a way of
freeing up access to European employment for their members. In
the end again there will be some trading off in which we will
actually want countries to accede to those which are in our interests
and for which we are lobbying on our behalf and in which we will
have to consider what flexibility may be necessary on our side,
but we are not going to cross that road, nor are we going to agree
to the majority of these 50.
Mr Rowlands
291. Just to reinforce Mr Maples's point about
revised Article 42 on social security, interestingly, in the way
it is headed, "Measures required in the field of social security
to provide freedom of movement", so their attempt is actually
to introduce these almost as part and parcel of making the single
market work. May I just draw attention not only to the article
but to the huge protocols attached to it which list almost every
single benefit that would as it were fall within some kind of
new revised Article 42. I assume because you have already said
that you are opposed to this proposition fundamentally. Do you
have substantial support amongst other Member States for opposing
this measure?
(Mr Cook) We have understanding. We have not necessarily
got the same degree of support on, say, social security as we
have on taxation in which there are quite a number of countries
who share our apprehensions for unanimity on taxation. Our concern
about social security is that if that became subject to majority
voting there is the danger that it could potentially trigger significant
additional sums on spending. Since that is potentially the case
it is appropriate that it should be done by unanimity and not
by majority voting.
292. What these revised articles and the protocols
are after is, I think, a whole new area of harmonisation on benefits.
How do you feel about that because that is what this is really
behind all this?
(Mr Cook) In fairness to the Commission, and this
in no way detracts from what I have just said, that we are not
going to agree to majority voting, what we are dealing with here,
which is not a new article; this is an existing article of the
Treaty, in the exercise with this 50 is not the creation of new
competencies and new articles but identifying some articles within
the Treaty which are currently done on unanimity and could potentially
move to majority voting. We do not think that this is one that
is appropriate to do that, but, to be fair to the Commission and
the Presidency, they are not proposing a new article that is not
already there.
293. I think the logical consequence of what
has been drafted before us is a very considerable extension of
attempts to harmonise benefits right across Europe in the name
of the single market.
(Mr Cook) I do not dispute your point about majority
voting and unanimity. We believe that that should be retained
on a unanimity basis. It is perhaps worth putting on record that
actually the great majority of decisions that are taken within
the Council of Ministers are taken on the basis of majority voting.
Our analysis of the past three years shows that 80 per cent of
all decisions taken by Council ministers were taken by majority
voting, not by unanimity. It is different if you look at the articles
and the Treaty in which you will find that there is a much higher
proportion than 20 per cent of the articles that are based on
unanimity but they are mainly articles that are rarely used, for
instance, own resources only comes round every six or seven years.
It is already the case that effectively for decision making within
the Council of Ministers the rule is majority voting. Indeed,
as I pointed out to the House in the last debate, Britain actually
does rather well out of that. We are defeated on majority voting
less often than France or Germany or the Netherlands or Spain.
294. But at least you can say that it is not
going to happen?
(Mr Cook) No.
Ms Abbott
295. Foreign Secretary, I want to ask you two
questions about the size of the Commission and then move on to
something which I do not think will come up in Nice but is a Commission
proposal. It is the "Nothing But Arms" initiative and
it is a trade proposal. On the size of the Commission, according
to press reports discussions on the size of the Commission are
focusing on a system where there will be first one commissioner
for Member States and then shift to a cap on the size of the Commission
with a system of rotation to the Member States. Can you confirm
for me whether you would support a system under which the United
Kingdom will not at all times be able to appoint a commissioner?
(Mr Cook) It is very difficult to be precise about
what may come out of Nice. My own view is that if the five larger
countries give up their second commissioner we have enough room
to accommodate any probable or likely first wave of enlargement
without any significant increase in the Commission. The first
wave is unlikely to be more than about half a dozen. Therefore,
the likely outcome of Nice in terms of Treaty amendment would
be for every country to have one commissioner. Britain though
will only agree to that if we get the other part of that package
which is a substantial increase in the simple re-weighting of
our vote in the Council to compensate for the agreement to give
up our first commissioner. In the longer term, if all 12 countries
of the applicant countries become members of the European Union,
we will have to look very seriously and very imaginatively at
how we try and accommodate those additional members with the current
requirement that every country has one Commissioner or, at present,
two Commissioners. Plainly, it will be very difficult to make
the Commission work coherently if it ends up with 26 or 27 Commissioners,
but I doubt that that is an issue that will be resolved at Nice.
It needs to be but some way down the track.
296. Something that has foreign policy implications
is the EBA, "Everything But Arms", initiative which
has been put forward by Commissioner Lammy, the EU Trade Commissioner,
and is now a formal Commission proposal. That would give the 48
least developed countries tariff and quota free access to European
markets. What it would do is completely capsize the economies
of the ACP countries that currently have protected access for
sugar, bananas, rum and rice. The Caribbean countries are very
concerned about this. They are concerned that in respect of the
least developed countries you will have a shattering effect on
the economies of countries which are only slightly more prosperous
and have a longstanding relationship with this country. It appears
the Commission wants to force this through by December and the
Caricom countries are in uproar about this.
(Mr Cook) That is not a matter for the General Affairs
Council.
297. I am aware of that.
(Mr Darroch) I think you have described the proposal
of Commissioner Lammy accurately. There is indeed a proposal to
offer wide trade concessions to the least developed countries.
In general, as you suggest, this is something that, as a country
that believes in a liberal trade agenda, we support. It does have
implications for those countries just outside the least developed
which have to be worked through. It has only just come out as
a proposal. It needs to be discussed in the working group at technical
level and then it will come up to the Council. We shall try to
preserve the best features of the proposal while protecting the
interests of the Caribbean countries who are just outside that
group, but we have not worked through the detail of this yet.
298. What is the timescale for implementation?
The Caribbean countries think it is going to start in December.
(Mr Darroch) The Commission has an ambitious timescale
in mind but it needs to get agreement from the Council on it and
whether that can be achieved by December must be open to question.
299. I am sure it seems a relatively small matter
to you but for the people of the Caribbean—
(Mr Cook) It is not small at all. The interests of
the ACP countries are very important, particularly important to
Britain and France as the two previous countries with most contact
with them. It is a very major issue.[1]
It[2]
is not coming before the GAC or before Nice and I am unsighted
on this but I can undertake to write to the Committee more fully
about it.
1 Note by witness: The fate of the ACP counties
is a very major issue. Back
2
Note by witness: The Commission proposal. Back
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