Meeting Summary
This week the Committee considered the
following documents:
Recommended for debate on the floor
of the House: Procedural Rights Package
These proposals are particularly significant,
but the Government's initial Explanatory Memoranda were disappointingly
thin on detail, particularly in the areas of which considerations
will inform the Government's decision on whether or not to opt-in,
and the extent to which the proposals comply with the principle
of subsidiarity and existing national legislation. We therefore
sent an urgent letter to the Minister last week asking for further
information. The Minister has now replied and, taking his response
into account, we recommend that the House issue a Reasoned Opinion
that the presumption of innocence proposal does not comply with
the principle of subsidiarity, and that there are opt-in debates
held on that proposal, those relating to the right to provisional
legal aid and those relating to procedural safeguards for children
and other vulnerable defendants in criminal proceedings. We recommend
that all the proposals are held under scrutiny.
Recommended for debate on the floor
of the House: Free movement of EU citizens
We reported on this Commission Communication
two weeks ago, and kept it under scrutiny, seeking urgent further
information from the Government on the data it held on the number
of nationals from other EU countries claiming benefits in the
UK; the data sources used to determine the present scale of abuse
of the UK's welfare system by migrant EU citizens; and the scale
and form of the most prevalent types of abuse and fraud of EU
free movement rules in the UK. The Minister has now replied.
We conclude that the challenges presented by free movement within
an enlarged European Union, the impact on national welfare systems
and local services, the adequacy of the safeguards enshrined in
existing EU rules to protect against abuse and fraud, and the
scope for (and proportionality of) action at national level are
of sufficient importance to merit a debate on the floor of the
House.
European Investigation Order
The Draft Directive aims to create a
single instrument for obtaining evidence located in another Member
State in the framework of criminal proceedings. It has been held
under scrutiny since September 2010, and the Government has opted
into it. We recommended in November that the proposal be debated
in European Committee; no date has yet been set. In the meantime
the Government has sent further details of the final draft, but
as it has a limité classification it cannot be deposited
for wider readership in the House. We express concern about the
scrutiny handling of the document, and ask the Minister to explain
in the course of the Committee debate to what extent national
law and/or procedure will have to be changed to implement the
EIO, and to confirm what its consequences are for the pre-Lisbon
JHA measures it either revises or replaces.
Commission's response to EPPO Reasoned
Opinion
The Commission has published a Communication
which forms a composite response to those Chambers of National
Parliaments — including both the House of Commons and the
House of Lords — which took the view that the proposal to
establish a European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) did not
comply with the principle of subsidiarity. We publish a detailed
rebuttal of many of the Commission's points, and note that the
UK Government shares our disappointment at the tone of the Commission's
comments. We raise a number of specific issues and keep the document
under scrutiny; we will also send our Report to the Commission.
Customs
The aim of this Draft Directive is to
harmonise civil penalties for customs infringements, which currently
vary throughout the EU, notwithstanding the fact that customs
legislation is completely harmonised across Member States. The
UK currently imposes civil penalties ranging from £250 to
£2,500 for such breaches. The Minister describes a limited
number of advantages of the proposal and considerably more disadvantages
— including that a single penalty regime would be disproportionate
and inflexible. We are also told that when the Commission first
raised this proposal at a high-level compliance seminar in 2012
it was only supported by one Member State. We therefore ask the
Minister to inform us, once negotiations have advanced a little,
how they are progressing. The document remains under scrutiny.
Restrictive measures against Iran
As part of the implementation of the
Joint Plan of Action agreed by Iran and the E3/EU+3, which entered
into force on 20 January, the Council amended Council Regulation
No. 267/2012, suspending certain EU restrictive measures against
Iran for a period of six months. The prohibition has been lifted
on: the provision of insurance and transport in relation to Iranian
crude oil sales to its current customers; on the import, purchase
or transport of Iranian petrochemical products and related services;
and on the provision of vessels, to enable the transport of Iranian
crude oil and petrochemical products. The ban on trade in gold
and precious metals with the Iranian government, its public bodies
and the Central Bank of Iran has also been suspended. As foreseen
by the Joint Plan of Action, the thresholds for authorising financial
transfers to and from Iran have been increased tenfold in order
to ease legitimate trade with Iran. The suspension will last
for six months during which relevant contracts will have to be
executed. By putting the sanctions relief in place, the EU has
implemented its part of the first step towards a comprehensive
solution to address concerns about the Iranian nuclear programme.
This first step may be prolonged by mutual consent between the
Iran and the E3/EU+3. The Committee reports on, and clears, the
document.
Animal cloning
The proposed Draft Directives would
prohibit the cloning of farmed animals and prevent the marketing
within the EU of food produced from cloned animals. A Commission
Report trailing such proposals was debated in European Committee
in 2011. We noted at the time the Government's view that while
it recognised the need to safeguard food safety and the welfare
of clones and their surrogate dams, existing EU legislation was
sufficient. This remains the Government's view, and it has also
identified several legal issues. We ask the Minister to respond
on legal points by our next meeting (on 29 January 2014), and
keep the proposal under scrutiny.
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