Meeting Summary
The Committee considered the following documents:
Subsidiarity and Proportionality and the Commission's
relations with national parliaments
Last October, we recommended the Commission's Reports
on Subsidiarity and Proportionality and on its relations with
national parliaments for debate on the floor of the House, in
view of the fundamental importance of the role of national parliaments
in scrutinising EU legislation and in providing democratic legitimacy
for the EU. The Government now informs us that this debate will
take place in European Committee B. We find this extremely disappointing,
and consider that it breaches the Government's commitment, as
set out in the Minister for Europe's Written Ministerial Statement
of 20 January 2011, to "strengthening its engagement with
Parliament on all European Union Business as part of our wider
work to reduce the democratic deficit in the EU".
Restrictive measures against Syria
We also consider proposals which would re-impose
travel restrictions and asset freezes against three individuals
associated with the Assad Regime in Syria, and one entity. The
original restrictions were annulled by the General Court, and
this new listing is based on a new statement of reasons. We support
the principle that restrictive measures should be both targeted
and legally robust, but it is not evident that this is the case
with these proposals, particularly given the background, which
includes the Council being unable to provide sufficient supporting
evidence for the original restrictions using open sources when
invited to do so in court hearings last June. The Minister for
Europe only indicates that these proposals are based on new grounds
supported by information taken from open sources, and that they
comply with fundamental rights. We clear these proposals so that
they can be adopted but ask the Minister to confirm that he considers
the reasons now given for the restrictive measures, and the underlying
evidence, to be sufficiently robust to deter or withstand further
legal challenge. Some similar issues are raised by the restrictive
measures against Iran which we are also reporting on this week.
Investment plan for Europe
In November 2014 the Commission published a Communication
which sets out a plan for promoting investment within the EU economy.
The plan has three strands: a European Fund for Strategic Investments,
to mobilise €315 billion (£245 billion) for investment;
a pipeline of investment projects and an investment advisory "Hub";
and a wider package of reforms to improve the investment climate.
The Government is fairly positive about the plan, and the Minister
now provides an update on the December European Council meeting,
where the ideas contained in the plan were discussed. However
he does not provide us with some specific information that we
requested when we last considered this Communication in December,
including on what financial consequences there might be for the
UK arising from EU budgetary involvement in the plan. We may well
wish to recommend that this document be debated, but we postpone
this decision until we have seen a copy of the related draft Regulation
on the proposed European Funds for Strategic Investments.
Scrutiny of the UK's 2014 block opt-out decision
Following an evidence session, on 12 January 2015,
with the Home and Justice Secretaries on the Government's overall
handling of the 2014 block opt-out process, and the failure to
meet its Parliamentary scrutiny obligations in relation to the
35 EU police and criminal justice measures which the UK has re-joined,
we now clear from scrutiny the Government's Explanatory Memoranda
on the measures subject to the block opt-out. These were submitted
to Parliament in July 2013 and were reproduced in Command Paper
8671, published in the same month. The Explanatory Memoranda provided
the basis for the Committee's detailed analysis of each measure
subject to the block opt-out in its November 2013 Report, The
UK's block opt-out of pre-Lisbon criminal law and policing measures.
The Committee published a follow-up Report in November 2014 and
has reported on the three Council Decisions and a Commission Decision,
adopted on, or shortly before, 1 December 2014 which were required
to authorise the UK to opt back into 35 measures. The Government
overrode the Committee's scrutiny reserve on two of these measures.
The evidence session represented the culmination of a lengthy
and highly unsatisfactory process of scrutiny, and the Home and
Justice Secretaries were left in no doubt as to the dissatisfaction
of this Committee, the Home Affairs and Justice Select Committees,
and the EU Committee in the House of Lords, with the Government's
handling of the process.
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