Meeting
Summary
The Committee considered the following documents:
The UK's 2014 block opt-out decision
This week we consider two draft Council Decisions
relevant to the UK block opt-out decision, which we considered
on 5 November. The first concerns the financial consequences of
the block opt-out. It would require the UK to repay around €1.5
million should it decide not to rejoin the Prüm package by
the end of 2015. The second concerns consequential and transitional
arrangements. It seeks to avoid the risk of a legal or operational
gap by extending the application of the 35 measures that the UK
is seeking to rejoin until 7 December 2014. As we made clear to
the Home and Justice Secretaries, we were not willing to be bounced
into clearing these Decisions at our meeting last week, given
their legal and political importance and the Government's delay
in responding to questions we raised on 5 November. As both Decisions
were adopted in Council on 27 November, we consider that retaining
them under scrutiny would serve no useful purpose, but we ask
the Government to explain whether it has overridden our scrutiny
reserve.
We do not accept the Government's explanation for
the delay in laying before Parliament the draft Criminal Justice
and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations, which transpose
into UK law ten of the 35 measures the UK is rejoining, and for
the haste with which Parliament was asked to consider these Regulations.
We see no good reason why consideration by Parliament could not
have commenced sooner, based on the outcome of technical level
discussions with the Commission and the Council reached in June.
Nor do we consider it credible for the Government to assert that
it had to legislate in this way to mitigate the risk that the
Commission might bring infraction proceedings against the UK on
1 December. In our view, this risk would be very small indeed.
We note the view of the Home and Justice Secretaries
that a vote on the draft Regulations on 10 November constituted
a vote on the entire package of 35 measures which the Government
is rejoining. On this point, the Hansard record of the debate
speaks for itself.
It appears that a scrutiny override in relation to
a Council Decision on the Schengen measures the UK has rejoined
— which has not yet been deposited for scrutiny —
is inevitable, given the mis-handling of the scrutiny process
by the Government. If this is indeed the case, we will expect
the Home and Justice Secretaries to appear before us to explain
why they have failed to meet their scrutiny obligations to Parliament.
Financial management
We also consider the European Court of Auditors'
2013 Audit Reports on the General Budget and the European Development
Fund. These reports, which are the Court of Auditors' main Annual
Reports, have revealed serious inadequacies in implementation
of EU expenditure, and it has therefore become customary that
we recommend these reports for debate. We do so again this year,
as although the 2013 reports affirm the reliability of the accounts,
the Statements of Assurance are qualified. We recommend that they
are debated in European Committee B alongside the Commission's
anti-fraud report, which we have previously recommended for debate.
We suggest that Members could focus in particular on Government
efforts to improve EU financial management. We remind the Government
that it is of the utmost importance that this debate should take
place before the ECOFIN Council in February 2015, when it is probable
the Council will be considering its recommendation to the European
Parliament for the discharge of the 2013 financial budget.
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