Meeting Summary
The Committee considered the following
documents:
EU enlargement: Albania
As part of the October 2013 progress
report on the "enlargement package", the European Commission
recommended that Albania be granted accession candidate status.
The December 2013 General Affairs Council (GAC) concluded that
it would examine, on the basis of a further Commission report,
"continued implementation of anti-corruption and judicial
reform strategies and of recently adopted relevant legislation
as well as a continued trend of pro-active investigations and
prosecutions, including in the area of organised crime; and in
the light of that, and "on the understanding that Albania
builds on the encouraging progress made so far", looked forward
to a decision regarding granting candidate status to Albania in
June 2014, subject to endorsement by the European Council. In
January, the Committee made its position clear: before any further
consideration by the June 2014 European Council, to grant such
status to Albania, the Committee expected an "unqualified
statement of the Government's positions before the event, so that
we can scrutinise it". At the very least we expected the
Government to provide an assessment of whether it felt that the
Commission's findings in its report on Albania's progress in
the fight against corruption and organised crime in judicial reform
constituted sufficient evidence of "sustained and concrete"
delivery. The Minister for Europe has now written to the Committee,
too late for the information to be reported to the House prior
to the relevant GAC, to say that the final decision would be taken
before the Council but "requires consultation across multiple
departments, which is now in progress". The Committee regards
this as unacceptable, as it prevents the House from conducting
any meaningful scrutiny of a highly controversial matter. We have
therefore invited the Minister to give evidence to the Committee
on this, and other, matters. We expect a clear explanation before
then of the position the Government took at the GAC and its reasons
for so doing.
European Public Prosecutor's Office
(EPPO)
The Committee reports on the State
of Play/Orientation Debate on the Draft Regulation on the establishment
of the European Public Prosecutor's Office. The original proposal
for an EPPO, published in July 2013, remains under scrutiny by
the Committee and was the subject of a Reasoned Opinion in October
2013 which, along with those submitted by other Member States,
reached the yellow card subsidiarity threshold that requires the
Commission to reconsider its proposal. The latest text under scrutiny
is a partial alternative to the Commission's original text and
represents an effort on the part of the Presidency of the Council
to exhaust all attempts at achieving the unanimity required in
Council to proceed with the proposal. We commend the Minister
for her comprehensive Explanatory Memorandum which sets out clearly
the amendments to the text, including the move to a new collegiate
model for the EPPO. However, given the Coalition commitment not
to participate in an EPPO in any format, our main concerns relate
to the impact on non-participating states, as well as to the potential
impact on the operation of Eurojust and OLAF, in which the UK
does participate. We continue to hold the proposal under scrutiny
and wait to hear from the Minister on further significant developments,
particularly as they relate to the concerns set out above.
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