Examination of Witnesses (Quesitons 33-39)
MR CHRISTIAN
LEFFLER AND
MR MICHEL
PETITE
19 SEPTEMBER 2007
WEDNESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2007
Present
| Bowness, L | Roper, L
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| Cohen of Pimlico, B | Thomas of Walliswood, B
|
| Grenfell, L (Chairman) | Wright of Richmond, L
|
Q33 Chairman:Could I begin by thanking you both very
much indeed for taking time out of your extremely busy schedules
to come and spend a little time with us, the House of Lords EU
Committee. We are on the record. You will be sent a transcript
of the conversation so that you can check and see that your views
have been properly reflected and we will then publish this as
part of our report. We are doing a progressive series of comments
on the Reform Treaty. It was very important for us to be able
to get the views from the Commission on the progress being made
at this fairly critical stage in the process. My colleagues, who
are with us today, have kindly made themselves available during
our British Parliamentary recess and I thank them very much for
being available. We have shown you, I think, a list of some of
the topics that we want to take up with you. I hope it will be
a nice, free flowing discussion. I hope that both of you will
come in whenever you feel you want to say something. Let us begin,
if we may, by asking whether either of you have any opening remarks
you would like to make by way of preface to our conversation or
whether you would like to go straight into questions.
Mr Leffler: If you would allow me, maybe I can say a few
general words about how the Commission has approached the overall
issue of reform of the institutions and the procedures under which
we operate. Before I get to that can I convey to you, I think
you have all met her, the best regards of Vice-President Wallström
who departed for Rome this lunchtime otherwise I am sure she would
have been pleased to find an opportunity to meet you. In a sense,
it is quite significant that we are all engaged together in this
exercise in 2007, the fiftieth anniversary of the European Union.
It is worth remembering how far we have come and how much has
been achieved in Europe by the European Community, by the European
Union, by its Member States and institutions in the course of
these 50 years, how much is now taken for granted compared to
where this whole adventure started from, and even more compared
to the sinister first half of the 20th century which preceded
the founding of the institutions and the bodies that gradually
developed into the Union. This fiftieth anniversary has also been
an opportunity to take stock and look ahead to see what it is
that people expect of the Union now. Societies evolve and citizens
make new demands on their governments, on their authorities, public
authorities are put to much greater tests of accountability nowadays
than they were 50 years ago or even 15 or 20 years ago. We have
new challenges, some of them developed from others, some of them
a result of the successes achieved so far in terms of meeting
the needs, the expectations and the aspirations of our citizens,
some of them the result of the changing realities around the globe,
the opportunities and the needs of Europe and the Europeans, our
possibilities as well as the threats we face. In all of these
areas we need to look at how we can best work together, what are
the structures we need, what are the policies where we can deliver
together and what are the policies which are best left to each
Member State, what are the methods we use within different policy
areas, which is the balance we find between efficiency and delivery
and respect for national sensitivities or national or cultural
particularities that require to be fully taken into account as
well. That has very much been the starting point of the reflection
on the work of the Commission in preparing the intergovernmental
conference and in giving our input into the negotiations that
led to the Mandate agreed in June and now during the IGC. We must
always keep in mind that the Treaty is there for a purpose, it
is not an end in itself. The Treaty is there to deliver results
and, therefore, whatever we agree within the Treaty has to be
relevant to delivering those results. I have four very broad points.
One is in terms of what we want the Treaty to deliver. The first
one is legitimacy, transparency and, if you like—I sometimes
hesitate to use the term—democratic accountability, but
certainly accountability. To make it easier to understand how
things are done and why they are done. To make it more transparent
so that people can actually see how they are done and who does
what in terms of the division of competences, in terms of the
transparency of procedures, including greater openness in debates
in the Council, the interaction between Council, Commission, Parliament
and so on. Secondly, effectiveness in delivering these different
policy areas, how we can make sure that we reach results but also
how we can make sure that the machine has effective safety valves
or emergency brakes that will ensure respect and assure Member
States, their administrations and their constituents, that there
is this respect for their particular concerns or expectations.
Thirdly, coming back in a sense to legitimacy, making clearer
what is our common fundament of principles and values on which
this edifice is built so that there is a recognition of what the
Union is there for, not just in very practical terms—the
Union is not there to lower roaming charges, that is something
useful and people like it but that is not one of our fundamental
values—but bringing it down to the fundamentals and making
sure that those values, principles, are thoroughly reflected in
the way we do business, in the way the institutions and the procedures
are built, and in a way that allows Member States or, indeed,
individual citizens to challenge the way we do business if they
think that in one way or another this goes beyond the broad realm
of the acceptable. Fourthly, Europe and the world, our capacity
to project our interests and those same principles and values
in the interests of Europe, to take advantage of opportunities,
to strengthen our common defence, not in the narrow sense of that
term but in the broad sense of that term, of what we stand for
and of our interests in a whole range of issues, and doing that
in a much more effective and coherent way than we have done so
far, less compartmentalisation, more of an overall view and within
that overall view allowing each actor, the different institutions
as well as the national actors, to play their part in bringing
together a coherent whole, not making this a single monolithic
whole but a common effective chorus. As one of my former bosses,
Chris Patten, now one of yours, liked to say, and anybody who
is interested in music will recognise, "singing from the
same hymn sheet", the effect of a well-trained chorus is
much more than the addition of individual voices, but we all do
have to sing in tune otherwise the overall effect is very quickly
spoiled. Those are the elements which we try to bear in mind at
every stage of this process bringing it down, if you like, as
President Barroso said just the other day when he was in Britain
speaking at the Liberal Party Conference, to two Rs: results and
reform. This Commission, ever since it took up office in 2004,
has been stressing the need to deliver results, not spending too
much time on grand designs but bringing forth concrete deliverables
to the different constituents of the Union and, in doing so, engaging
in the intergovernmental conference by looking at what are the
reforms necessary to be able to deliver those results in the years
ahead. If I may add a third R to those two in the present context:
coming up with a reasonable Treaty. Reasonable is not the R I
am thinking of. The R I am thinking of is ratification. Everybody
has their own idea of what the ideal Treaty is but we do not need
an ideal Treaty, we need a Treaty that works and works in the
sense there is sufficient buy-in in every Member State so that
it will be accepted as reasonable and legitimate by their governments
and their electorates and, therefore, it will have a good chance
of being ratified and put in place putting an end to too many
years of introverted scrutiny of our institutions rather than
somewhat more outward looking efforts on delivering the results.
I am sorry I was a bit long.
Q34 Chairman: No. Thank you very much indeed for
that useful, eloquent introduction. Mr Petite, would you like
to say something and that will lead us into the questions?
Mr Petite: Please go straight into the questions.
Q35 Chairman: Maybe we could begin by getting
your view on the progress that has been made, particularly in
light of the fact that the group of legal experts have done their
first reading and reported on that, but there is still some work
to do amongst the legal experts, is there not?
Mr Petite: I now feel embarrassed to take the floor and reduce
the level of the discussion.
Q36 Chairman: No, we want to get some of the detail.
Mr Leffler: He is the results man!
Mr Petite: Not the vision man! The Expert Group basically
has worked on very technical issues and rather minute issues but
has done a lot of checking. This results from the fact that the
whole system which is at play is a complex one. There is a text
by default, which is the Nice Treaty, in which should be inserted
all the "innovations" of the ex-Constitutional Treaty,
plus the Mandate. It is the combination of these three which is
our work. We have been checking how this puzzle was combined after
the Presidency text in July. In the end, I was personally concerned
that there could be some divergence of interpretation, for example
of what an "innovation" of the ex-Treaty would be. But,
in fact, there was nothing much of that. I have to say the work
of the Expert Group has been mainly technical. Since July in the
Presidency's text, which I think you have seen, all the changes
have been mainly technical. There have been some modifications
of presentation and there have been some additions here and there,
and I could quote a few examples but you would see that those
I quote as the main substantive elements which were added were,
in fact, very minor. For example, we have inserted a definition
of "Citzenship" in the Treaty of the European Union,
purely declaratory, on a request from the Parliament. It makes
sense because "Citizenship" is mentioned several times
in the Treaty on the European Union, and without a prior definition
it read very oddly. We have also added mention of those consultative
bodies which were at pains not to be mentioned in the Treaty,
the Social and Economic Council, the Committee of Regions. We
have added some provisions in the Treaty on the European Union
on the future Commission's composition referring very broadly
to the way the rotation system of appointment would work, but
not going into details: it will still be the Treaty on the Functioning
of the Union (TFU), which will make it work. We have also decided
to suppress the titles of the articles in the Treaty on the European
Union. There was a discrepancy between the Treaty on the European
Union (TEU), which had titles on every article except, strangely,
on foreign policy, and the TFU which includes no heading for each
article because it derives from the Nice Treaty. The idea was
to put the two in coherence and I think everybody felt the easiest
solution was to delete rather than to invent: thus the deletion
of the titles in the Treaty on the European Union. These technicalities,
which are not very significant, which are mainly legal checking
of all the texts, in the end probably derived from the method
used by the group which has been to stick absolutely strictly
to the Mandate and not to depart from it. Any discussion or any
proposal which would depart from it would be immediately quoted
as "out of the Mandate" and put off the debate. This
has been extremely efficient. The Presidency has managed that
very well. Indeed, some of the interventions here and there which
proposed new issues out of the Mandate were cleanly rejected,
possibly not without some political effect. Because so far the
rule of the game has been that any issue which could be raised
at political level with the foreign ministers or with the European
Council in October should be raised first in the Expert Legal
Group, and if they are off-Mandate they are considered as out
of the discussion. Some rather political issues coming from Poland,
for example have been treated that way: they have been removed
from the table as "off-Mandate" and are supposed not
to be reproduced at a higher level. Maybe that is wishful thinking
but that is the way in which we have worked so far. We have kept
to the agenda. We are now finishing the second reading and we
still have a few issues to look at, one or two technically difficult
ones. The Group has worked well.
Q37 Chairman: There seems to be a rather fine line
there when you say that the group of legal experts had to decide
whether something was in the Mandate or outside it and, therefore,
if it was deemed outside then it would not go forward to the Foreign
Affairs Ministers and then to the Council. In a sense, that is
partly a political decision, is it not? I am interested to know
whether you were expecting that was the kind of decision that
the legal experts would have to make. There are two particular
areas which you have had to investigate which are of interest
to us as national parliamentarians. One is the still, as I understand
it, not quite decided issue of the use of the word "contribute",
national parliaments "shall contribute" to the successful
work of the European Union, or however it is put. I understand
that in the French translation it merely says "contribuent",
it does not say "shall". Were the group of legal experts
happy that the wording such as it will be in various languages
is clear and declaratory and is not being prescriptive? The second
issue I want to raise with you, which I think is still causing
some problems, particularly for the European Parliament, is the
definition of EU citizenship because what they were saying was
they would rather see the definition as set out in the Constitutional
Treaty rather than the Maastricht Treaty which they say is unacceptable.
Do I take it from that that what is in the Reform Treaty, is the
Maastricht wording and not the wording from the Constitutional
Treaty?
Mr Petite: What the Parliament has wanted is simply to take
part of the definition in order to make a marker in the Treaty
on the European Union that there is such a thing as European citizenship.
It is a very short sentence which is extracted from the common
based text between Maastricht and Nice and the Constitutional
Treaty, and the rest has remained absolutely unchanged. It is
a declaratory sentence or giving a signal and nothing else. As
I said, the logic of it is that later on in the same Treaty there
is reference to that citizenship, so their technical argument
was it sounded odd to have some element of citizenship without
having a definition prior to that. It is without any legal consequence.
Q38 Chairman: The group is happy about the reference
to national parliaments contributing to the work of the European
Union?
Mr Petite: Yes. I think some issues of that kind have been
sent straight away to the Linguists and the issue you mentioned
is typically one of those sorts. How to translate "shall
contribute" into French, is as common practice "contribuent".
Q39 Chairman: Okay.
Mr Petite: This will be checked accordingly.
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