Examination of Witnesses (Questions 85
- 99)
THURSDAY 3 MAY 2007
MR GARY
TITLEY
Q85 Chairman:
Thank you very much for coming. As you will appreciate, we are
on the record. We will send you a transcript. We are taking a
look at the Annual Policy Strategy to try and get two things:
a good handle on how it is drawn up and how, at the institutional
level, it is scrutinised, in your case how the European Parliament
handles it. We are also interested to hear where there may be
issues within the 2008 Policy Strategy that give the European
Parliament some concern, in particular maybe yourself as one of
the important members of the Parliament. Would you like to give
us a few thoughts to open the proceedings?
Mr Titley: Thank you, my Lord Chairman. I will
be fairly brief, it will be better to deal with the questions.
The one thing I would say, is that it is important to see the
APS in its context, which is that it is not meant to be a major
policy development piece of work but really a sort of annual check-up
on where we are going in relation to what has gone on before and
what the Commission has set out in its five-year strategy. As
such, we would not have expected it, therefore, to have new major
policy initiatives in it. The second thing I would say is the
interesting thing is for the very first time, as far as I know,
the APS talks about communication and how it gets its message
across and I think this is a major step forward because it is
a sign that the Commission is finally getting to grips with the
fact that it is no good having the world's best policies if you
do not tell anybody about them or communicate them. That is an
important step forward, no doubt initiated by Commissioner Wallström,
who is very keen on these issues. It is also interesting to look
at the APS to see to what extent—this may or may not be
relevant to your work—the agenda is now very much what we
would call a UK agenda. It is very much about practical policies
which will make a practical difference: climate change is the
obvious example but security is another one. The fact also that
communication is so important in the APS is also a reflection
of the sort of messages the UK Government has been pushing for
the last few years, which is you need to be practical, you need
to be concrete and keep to the point. Those are the main observations
I would have about it. Just to reiterate, I do not think we should
expect too much of it. There is an issue, which is an issue more
for the European Parliament, in how it deals with the APS. Clearly
this one is important because, as it points out, in 2008 there
are lots of interesting things that are going to be happening:
the Lisbon Review, the health check, supposedly, of the CAP, discussions
on the future of the budget, et cetera. 2008 is an important year.
The European Parliament has a tendency to look at these communications
from the Commission from a technical point of view by committee
and I think this is a weakness of the European Parliament which
is now becoming a major weakness, because what is needed is a
political response and the European Parliament needs to find a
mechanism for responding politically and not technically to the
Commission's position. That is where I think there is a weakness
because in many ways the APS is about setting out the Commission's
view of what the policy should be to fulfil the strategic framework
already set out. Getting a response from the other institutions,
including the Parliament, and then incorporating that into its
Legislative and Work Programme, the emphasis is on the European
Parliament to give an effective political response. It is no good
dealing with this on a technical level. The Budget Committee deal
with this on a technical level in relation to the budget, for
example, but that is not what is needed, this needs to be political.
Q86 Chairman:
Is it not a bit misleading to call it an Annual Policy Strategy
in that case? In the light of what you have just said it is really
an annual policy check. Why did we call it a strategy in the first
place? I am not quite clear.
Mr Titley: You will have to ask the Commission
that one. Obviously there is a plethora of ongoing business in
the European Union and in a sense the Policy Strategy is to identify
what the key issues are and where we should be putting our priorities
and waking people up to the fact that these issues are on the
horizon. 2008 is going to be a particularly important year for
the European Union and people have to be thinking about that now.
In that sense it is a Policy Strategy in terms of mapping out
what are the key points for next year, but in a sense it is also
a health check really.
Q87 Lord Tomlinson:
I am glad you raised that point about looking at it by committee
because we raised this with Mr Welle, and I certainly raised it
with him in a very critical way and I am pleased to hear what
you have said, because it does confuse. When you have got every
single committee salami-slicing their views it becomes very difficult
to get a strategic objective. I will not ask you a question about
that because I think you have answered it. What I would like to
hear your views about is: you are saying we have got to be determining
where we are putting our priorities but looking at this document
it becomes very, very difficult to decide where we are putting
our priorities because where I see priorities I expect to see
resources moving in that direction. If you take the table that
is in the Commission document, even on things that we all agree
are very important, on competitiveness for growth and employment,
no change is proposed, not now and not in the next five years,
cohesion for growth and employment, no change this year, no change
in the rest of the financial forecast proposed, and so you go
on. Freedom, security and justice, no change this year, no change
in the rest of the Financial Perspective. When you talk about
determining our priorities and putting our effort behind those
priorities, how do you see that fitting into budgetary resources
in the context of the Financial Perspective which is largely hitting
up against the limits? Are there things where as the Parliament
enhances one priority they will be prepared to diminish others?
Mr Titley: I think you have hit the nail on
the head. Going back to my earlier answer about the Policy Strategy,
what is reflected in this paper is the importance now being given
to climate change, so in a sense that shows a change in the policy
make-up. To come back to Lord Tomlinson's point specifically,
he has hit the nail on the head in that throughout discussions
about what the European Union can do, and the Council are particularly
guilty of this, there is always insufficient attention to where
the money is going to come from to do it and how you are going
to get there. There are, of course, more resources being allocated
within the budget for things like FRONTEX, Eurojust, et cetera,
so there is a change of resources, but there is an attempt to
change the resources within headings where we are up against the
margins anyway, and particularly on Category Four the use of the
Guarantee Fund is questionable whether it is legal, I think, so
there is a degree of smoke and mirrors inevitably. That is one
of the problems you have now talking about EU policy, that the
governments are determined to restrict the EU budget, the EU budget
therefore has got very little room for manoeuvre, and until we
have a root and branch reassessment of where the budget is going
what you are doing in essence is playing around the edges moving
money around. What the Commission has done, particularly in headings
one and three, is simply to say, "We will find the money
because some programmes will not start until later and, therefore,
we will not need the money for them until then". It does
not find a way around this problem. Ultimately you could argue,
"The Commission can't do this, this is a matter for Member
States to decide in terms of Financial Perspectives" and
you could argue it is part of the 2008 budget review that we should
be looking at how we spend our money, do we completely reopen
the budget and have a radical change in its approach or do we
continue to run along from hand to mouth every year as we are
doing at the moment.
Q88 Chairman:
I was going to ask you, Mr Titley, about the Social Reality check.
Where is this leading us and what importance do you attach to
it?
Mr Titley: One of the great issues the European
Union has to get to grips with is exactly what we mean by social
policy in a modern, globalised economy. Clearly there are many
different views about that. I once sat in a meeting where the
head of the French Socialist delegation gave a very pertinent
analysis of where the world was and what the issues were and I
pointed out that I agreed 100 per cent with everything he said
but I could guarantee that once we started talking about how we
deal with those problems he and I would be in total disagreement.
There are all sorts of papers flying around at the moment on a
social policy based around the idea of flexicurity and the idea
that social policy is about providing support for people to find
work, support for people in work, training and guarantees rather
than a social policy which involves basically paying people to
be unemployed. Of course, there are widely differing views in
the European Union and the UK view of social policy is a long
way away from the French view of social policy, quite frankly.
That is where next year is going to be very interesting because
the Commission has to come forward with proposals for the mid-term
review of the Social Action Programme, and what direction is it
going to go in. That is one of the key battlegrounds, I think.
Q89 Lord Marlesford:
Obviously one of the really crucial issues is the French 35 hour
week. As far as I am aware no other country has joined that but
the French do not show much sign of abandoning it, even Sarkozy
has not committed himself to abandoning it and Royal seems to
be inclined to reinforce it and ensure that it is more adhered
to. That is the sort of area where it is quite hard to see how
there can be any common moving forward on social policy when you
have a disparity such as that which is another form of what you
were saying about paying people not to work.
Mr Titley: Without wishing to go off on a tangent
about French social policy, it is true. My view of the French
situation is that the French view social policy through the eyes
of the world as they think it should exist rather than the world
as it does exist and, therefore, you have very high unemployment
because the labour market is very rigid, it is very difficult
to move people on once they are 45 so youngsters have high unemployment.
I do not think that is a view that is generally accepted outside
France any more, and Belgium I suppose. The agenda has moved on.
Flexicurity, the Nordic example, also the UK example, is very
much one which is gaining more credibility as we move forward.
The 35 hour week, in a sense I think is being less adhered to
in France and we will see what happens after Sunday's elections.
Q90 Chairman:
I can tell you it is being less adhered to. My wife had personal
experience of it! Could I ask you if you could comment briefly—I
know this is asking you to comment on something that the ALDE
group has come up with but I would be interested in your views
on that—it appears that they thought the Annual Policy Strategy's
three lines on the subject of the future of Europe was simply
inadequate. Is that the sort of subject that ought to be in the
Policy Strategy?
Mr Titley: No. The Commission got it dead right
on this. Where the Commission are moving is we are talking about
the concrete policies that go to make a difference to people's
lives and not wasting time on institutional navel gazing. The
situation is no longer with the Commission, the situation is with
the Member States. It is up to France and the Netherlands to decide
how we are going to move forward really, it is not one for the
Commission to waste any more time on. I think the Commission are
right. Because it is only three lines or whatever, it does make
the point extremely well that in order to be able to achieve many
of these objectives you will need a more streamlined decision-making
structure. That is all you need to say at this point. For a Policy
Strategy to engage in all this institutional debate would be entirely
wrong. I think the ALDE position is really Andrew Duff's position,
quite frankly, as one of these people who is a sort of institutional
junkie, and I do not necessarily share his perspective on this,
it would be a waste of paper.
Chairman: Thank you for clarifying that.
I share your view on that.
Q91 Lord Bowness:
We have heard other witnesses be quite enthusiastic about the
paragraphs on improving communication. As I understand it you
are saying, and I am not disagreeing with you, the funding is
inadequate for much of this and the Council does not want to increase
the budget. Is there a danger in too much communication of all
of this to the public as a whole because, given what you have
said about the funding, is there not a huge danger that they are
going to be disappointed and it is going to add to the disillusionment?
Can we deliver on so much? We do talk about these being priorities
but something that covers so much and so many different subjects
is hardly a set of realistic priorities in a year. What worries
me is that it is very easy to say, "Europe said it would
do this and it has not done it". Do you think that is a problem
or not?
Mr Titley: No. That is obviously a very valid
point but it seems to me that what the Commission is saying is
we have got to communicate, it has got to be local and it has
got to be well-organised. In a sense you could argue that is not
exactly news, some of us have been saying that for years, but
the fact is they are focusing on that, and are doing things, FRONTEX
is very important, Eurojust, the whole climate change agenda.
It is important that the Commission are saying to people, "This
is how this is making a difference to you" and it is communicating
that rather than going off on sort of airy-fairy debates. Communication
is important. The budget issue is a broader issue in terms of
the ambitions of the European Union are not matched by the financial
resources they are prepared to put into them and the biggest culprit
in my view is the Council which is constantly coming up with some
new idea of what they should do but never works out where the
money is coming from. As with any other resources, it is not simply
a question of increasing the budget but it is a question of reallocating
resources within the budget and making some decisions there. The
communication thing is right, and it is a huge breakthrough that
we are talking about that in the Annual Policy Strategy but you
are right to say that we have got to be careful not to promise
things we cannot deliver because that does add to disillusionment.
Q92 Lord Tomlinson:
I come back to something I alluded to a bit earlier. As we get
clear statements about things that are increasing in priority—climate
change, FRONTEX, those things that you mentioned—is there
any acceptance of a need to start picking out things and saying,
"These have diminished in priority", not as a statement
of what you want but as a statement of reality within a constrained
financial situation?
Mr Titley: Yes, I think there is, and I think
the Parliament showed that when it produced its budget for the
Financial Perspective which came in under the Commission level.
I go back to our conversation earlier on. The problem is if you
look at these issues, as you say by salami-slices by committee,
each committee then throws in its favourite topics and there is
a failure to get an overall perspective which then ends up often
producing nothing more than shopping lists. I think where the
Parliament has got to improve its performance is in getting a
much more coherent political strategy as a response to this. This
is a weakness of the Parliament, frankly. You have got to be able
to say to people, "If you have got four priorities, choose
your four priorities, you cannot have everything". There
is a tendency to do that because of the way we work.
Lord Tomlinson: That makes it very clear.
Q93 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. Klaus Welle was saying to us when
we raised this issue with him that the committees produced their
comments in two sections, the big priorities and then the smaller
stuff. I was just wondering whether the Commission reads the smaller
stuff. They are more interested in the big priorities, I would
have thought, are they not?
Mr Titley: Yes. In a sense a lot of the smaller
stuff is work in progress anyway. I think it is right, the Commission
do look at the big stuff.
Q94 Chairman:
Would you say that on the whole you are unhappy with the degree
to which the European Parliament can influence the Policy Strategy
or do you think that the procedures and mechanisms are there for
you to do it?
Mr Titley: Ultimately, the Parliament has the
budgetary authority or has the power to influence most of the
budget because, as we said in the resolution on the Annual Policy
Strategy, we want the Commission's Work Programme more closely
allied with the budgeting process. The problem is I do not think
the Parliament has yet come to grips with how it influences things
politically in the overall framework, that is the weakness. Yes,
we do have the opportunity to influence it but we have got to
be clear what our view is and we have got to avoid the shopping
list mentality.
Q95 Chairman:
That assumes some kind of a consensus within the Parliament which
must be very hard to find.
Mr Titley: Yes. There is a growing consensus
about the challenges ahead and the policies we need. I do not
think that is quite as difficult as it once was. Climate change
and security are obviously big issues. Responding to the Lisbon
agenda and the mid-term review are the big issues that I think
you will get a lot of consensus of the Parliament on.
Q96 Chairman:
This has been the first year that the Commission has taken the
initiative to ask the national parliaments to comment on the APS
but what are not clear to us are two things: one is what is the
optimum moment for the national parliaments to make their views
known, obviously as early as possible but it is a bit difficult
to identify exactly the moment when we should be doing it; and,
two, is there any feeling within the European Parliament that
the national parliaments are treading on your toes in doing so?
Mr Titley: I am not aware of any feeling of
that nature. In a sense, often from our point of view the frustration
is getting national parliaments to respond. Sometimes they do
not or it is late. There is a meeting going on as I speak of the
Legal Affairs Committee with national parliaments. It is getting
national parliaments there and in the room to talk about it that
is difficult. I do not really think that. As you know, I have
always held the view that national parliaments and the European
Parliament are two sides of the same coin, which is about democratic
accountability, and we will only have effective democratic accountability
in the European Union if we can link national parliaments with
the European Parliament and get away from this idea that somehow
they are in competition with each other.
Q97 Chairman:
Do you see any glaring omissions from the Policy Strategy this
time around?
Mr Titley: I do not think so, apart from the
area Lord Tomlinson referred to about the money: where is the
money coming from? In a sense, the priorities select themselves.
As I said in my introductory remarks, what fascinates me is the
extent to which these have now coalesced against the sorts of
things we brought up at the Hampton Court Conference during the
British Presidency, which was very much that sort of agenda. It
is quite fascinating to see how it has coalesced so quickly around
those areas.
Chairman: That is interesting. Has anybody
got a specific point they would like to raise on this?
Q98 Lord Tomlinson:
I would not mind going on to another question, my Lord Chairman.
Within this document, and I must say I am not particularly impressed
with the Commission document—for a Commission that has got
a major priority of communication it makes it extraordinarily
difficult for anybody outside the institutional loops here to
read it because it refers to information that is not actually
present in the document—but one of the things that is relatively
clear is the Commission framework for human and financial resources
in 2008. We have dealt with the financial resources but what about
the human resources bit, do you think it is realistic?
Mr Titley: As you know, the Parliament is concerned
about the fact that only about half the people who are going to
be brought in as a consequence of enlargement will be working
on those areas like Better Regulation, et cetera. The Parliament's
view tends to be that the Commission is rather underestimating
what is needed and there needs to be more mobility of people across
priority areas within the Commission. I will confess it is not
an area which I am an expert on, so my answer is very weak on
this point. It is the usual problem that you have got a structure
and you are trying to adapt the structure. If you were starting
again with a fresh piece of paper you would not necessarily have
that particular structure. The Commission is having to act within
the restraints and clearly there is no enthusiasm for a huge increase
in staff in the Commission, so there is probably going to have
to be more mobility if we are going to be able to maintain a focus
on the key areas.
Q99 Chairman:
Can you tell us a little bit about what you know about President
Pöttering's working group on reform. What is his timeframe
on that?
Mr Titley: I am not sure of the full timeframe.
They are coming through with a series of proposals in waves. The
initial proposals are intended to be debated before the summer
and then there are long-term perspectives thereafter. It is certainly
meant to be all done and dusted within a year, as I understand
it.
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