Examination of Witness (Questions 220-239)
MR ALAN
SEATTER
28 NOVEMBER 2006
Q220 Chairman: Two things are happening.
One is that the Israeli Government more or less said that they
want to eliminate Palestinian migrant workers into Israel, so
that opportunity has been closed down. Secondly, as we witnessed
in the West Bank and as we have heard about closure of the borders
at Gaza, the ability to trade competitively is totally disrupted
when you have to go through the road blocks and there are delays
and you have back-to-back offloading, and so forth. What is the
EU doing, as part of the Palestinian agreement, to alleviate that
situation?
Mr Seatter: We sponsored the work
of Mr Wolfensohn, the Quartet envoy, and we had somebody on his
team. We made a financial contribution to his operation. Part
of that work was the Agreement on Movement and Access. So we sponsored
the Agreement on Movement and Access. We also have a monitoring
operation at Rafah to help ease movement of people in and out
of Gaza, and we are working with the US on the Karni Crossing
for goods. So we are trying to address the practical problems
in those ways, and we are addressing the political problem by
putting pressure on Israel on access and movement and other problems
related to this whole issue of Palestinian goods, and we are providing
support for those operations—we have people at the border
helping with exports. But that is very much disrupted by the whole
cycle of violence that is going on in Gaza and the West Bank at
the moment. So we are addressing the problems where we can, but
we recognise the fact that we do not have a huge amount of power
to impose solutions here. We have tried with our trilateral working
group, we have tried with these other solutions and that is as
far as we have got up to now.
Q221 Chairman: I am going to ask
Richard Burden but it leads to the question that what we saw in
the West Bank was that the whole issue of Israeli settlements,
never mind the legality or the principle, is that they divide
up the West Bank into a patchwork of detached communities, as
a result of which people cannot work together, they cannot do
business together, they cannot operate. Is there not an obligation
on the EU to do something about that?
Mr Seatter: We have made it very
clear to Israel that, first of all, we supported the withdrawal
of all settlements from Gaza, which is the first time in 37 years
that Israel has withdrawn any settlement; so we were hopeful that
that was going to lead to further progress in the West Bank, and
we were pushing Israel on that. The settlements are illegal under
international law; it now appears that they were also illegal
under Israeli law, and we understand that the Supreme Court is
going to be looking at that question. So I think that Member States
of the EU will want to be very, very clear with Israel about that,
and that there is no question of any political settlement of the
problem that does not respect the fundamental parameters, which
have been very, very clear all along.
Q222 Richard Burden: You made it
very clear that the settlements are illegal under international
law. Obviously produce from Israel can be imported into the EU
under preference in accordance with the EU/Israel Association
Agreement. It is also the case that products from these illegal
settlements are imported into the EU, often apparently under preference,
and with a label on them saying "Made in Israel". As
I understand it, the EU has reached a technical arrangement with
Israel, whereby the principle of having "Made in Israel"
on goods produced in the illegal settlements is acceptable to
the EU and the Euro-Mediterranean Network has said that that basically
amounts to legal acquiescence in an illegal practice of settlements.
What would your view be in response to that?
Mr Seatter: I am going to reject
the fact that it is an acquiescence because we have made it totally
clear that, irrespective of any technical arrangement for dealing
with this problem, we do not accept that there is Israeli jurisdiction
over the illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
so we do not accept that at all, and I do not agree that, that
there is acquiescence in that policy because we have made that
extremely clear to Israel and everybody else. On the question
of the preferential treatment of these goods, it is true that
up until we made the arrangement with Israel that there were problems
of settlement goods coming into our markets, which were very unclear,
maybe not being subject to duty. So we tackled that problem and
we have reached this arrangement with Israel where the customs
authorities of each Member State now have the power to impose
duties on settlement products because those are identified in
the customs documents prepared by Israeli, and we have looked
at the Israeli internal instructions to their customs people and
we are satisfied that they meet those requirements. So all goods
from settlements are excluded from the preferential regime of
the EU-Israel Association Agreement, and so we believe that agreement
is being respected. We keep it constantly under review with customs
officials in Member States and the view that they have put to
us in the most recent discussion we have had is that it is working
satisfactorily.
Q223 Richard Burden: Who said that?
Mr Seatter: Member State customs
officials have told us that they believe it is working satisfactorily;
but we will constantly keep it under review, and if there are
any cases where it is not being respected then we have powers
to investigate that and to recover duties under our arrangements
with Israel.
Q224 Richard Burden: My understanding
of the way that this arrangement is meant to be monitored is that
the goods will still be, interestingly, labelled "Made in
Israel", so that will not give the customs official a lot
of guidance as to whether they are produced in a settlement or
in Israel, but they have a postcode on them, and if you know the
postcodes you will know which is a settlement and which is Israel.
Are you confident that all customs officials in all Member States
know the postcodes?
Mr Seatter: There are two checks:
one of them is the postcode and the other is the name because
the transliteration from Hebrew to other languages is not always
clear, so there is a double check there. We have produced a list
of all of these locations and the customs officials have them.
Q225 Richard Burden: In every Member
State?
Mr Seatter: In every Member State.
So even if you get a case of goods produced in a settlement and
then trans-shipped through, let us say, Tel Aviv, there is the
power to detect what is being done where so that duty can be applied,
and we are satisfied that that arrangement is working. But, as
I say, it is complicated and we want to keep that constantly under
review.
Q226 Richard Burden: How are you
reviewing it? You say that Member States said, "We think
it is going okay"? but has there been any case, since that
technical arrangement was reached in February 2005, of goods produced
in a settlement being imported apparently under preference where
duty was imposed, or that it was turned back, or it was questioned
by the Israelis? Have you produced any documents to say what has
happened?
Mr Seatter: I have to say that
I am not aware of a case like that, that has been produced, but
if it did arise—and we are in constant contact with NGOs
and other organisations on this—then we have powers to investigate
and to recover duty if necessary.
Q227 Richard Burden: But do you produce
any reports of what has been coming in, what has been monitored,
what the results were, whether good or bad? Has there been any
report produced anywhere that we could have a look at?
Mr Seatter: We have a meeting
of customs officials between Member States and the European Commission
where this is reviewed. I have to say that I am not aware if there
has been a report produced on that or not.
Q228 Richard Burden: We asked the
Commission's representative in the Occupied Territories and he
said he really did not know, that this was really for Brussels
to sort out; that he would act if there was any complaint, but
he had not had any complaint and he did not see it as his job
to do anything from that end of monitoring what was going out.
Mr Seatter: The Commission does
not have powers at borders of Member States; this is a responsibility
of Member States—
Q229 Richard Burden: But you could
ask Member States to keep regular reports and put them through
to you?
Mr Seatter: But we meet them regularly
in the Customs Committee that we have with them, and this is an
item on the agenda of these meetings, and we review whether there
have been difficulties with this arrangement and that is what
we will continue to do.
Q230 Richard Burden: Could you provide
the Committee with any information that has come out of these
meetings?
Mr Seatter: The answer is I do
not know, but I will certainly check whether there is anything
I can provide. [1]
Chairman: Thank you very much. As you
can see, having come from the region three weeks ago—and
I think you share our view—this is a very difficult situation,
where it is band-aid for a patient who is on life support, as
it were, and it is not sustainable. I think one of the difficulties
one has is that everybody seems to be hoping somehow or another
that a government of national unity will emerge which
will let people off the hook. The concerns of the Committee are
that if that does not happen and this goes on it is difficult
to predict what the outcome will be, other than a very seriously
deteriorating situation. Clearly if there was no TIM, however,
that collapse would have happened, and I think we have to accept
that. Thank you very much, you have given us some very full answers.
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