Examination of Witness (Questions 400-419)
Mr David Harley
8 MAY 2008
Q400 Chairman: In reality it is a
compromise, is it not, derived from history?
Mr Harley: You could say that about a lot of
things to do with the European Union.
Q401 Chairman: Or our own.
Mr Harley: There is not a great movement of
people out there demonstrating in the streets and saying this
should not happen and must be changed if there is ever another
Treaty. I think we will have to live with it.
Q402 Chairman: We have heard about
some problems which arise in the area of the Third Pillar at the
moment from the haphazard way in which legislation can come through.
I think Catherine Day confirmed the intention is that the new
system will make that less likely if you have to get a quarter
of the Member States together.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Q403 Chairman: I do not know whether
there is anything else you wish to comment on regarding the Third
Pillar. Have you seen any problem in the way in which legislation
in the area of Freedom, Security and Justice has developed? It
has been explained to us as perhaps looking like a patchwork but
effectively has been filling in the squares in pre-existing programmes,
the Tampere and Hague Programmes in particular.
Mr Harley: There is some logical extension of
those decisions. I mentioned earlier that being slightly charitable
from our European Parliament perspective, we recognise that areas
such as judicial and police co-operation traditionally lie at
the heart of national governments' prerogatives but it has happened
that certain Member States' proposals in this area constitute
initiatives which sometimes overlap with pending legislative procedures.
There is certainly a problem in terms of loss of coherence in
some cases. I am not an expert in this area, and I am sure others
around this table are, but the main criticism I would make on
a personal level is that we do not seem to be making very much
progress in judicial co-operation despite this rather special
extraordinary procedure allowing Member States to take initiatives
and weakening the Commission's right of initiative in this area.
Apart from the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant,
which I think was considered very successful, useful and efficient,
particularly in the case of the United Kingdom, there is no major
piece of legislation that I am aware of that has been adopted
in the field of criminal law. At the moment there would seem to
be something of a disconnect between the exceptionality of the
procedure and a lack of results, but perhaps in the fullness of
time those results will come through. On police co-operation things
are working better. That is a sort of interim report from our
perspective at the moment.
Q404 Chairman: You presumably watch
the various proposals under the Third Pillar come through, for
example minimum procedural rights in the criminal area, provisions
relating to bail, serving custody pending trial or return to your
home country while pending trial, the Supervision Order, a similar
provision in relating to sentencing, and so on, and currently,
of course, the proposal on trials in absentia. You are disappointed
by the outcome or progress made on these, are you?
Mr Harley: It seems that a lot of these ideas
are very justified in a particular national context but there
may be difficulties in making them of realistic application in
an efficient way across 27 Member States.
Q405 Chairman: It is certainly our
impression that they create practical difficulties.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Q406 Chairman: As a matter of interest,
how far can the Parliament contribute to working out solutions?
Presumably it has a very broad representational membership on
the committees which look at these things.
Mr Harley: In this area, like in any other I
suppose, Members of the European Parliament who sit on the very
important Committee of Civil Liberties, as it is currently called
in the Parliament, will be guided and inspired by their own governments,
their own political parties and by their constituents. There is
sometimes a problem, we believe, of relative lack of information
for the Parliament as compared with the information received by
the Council or in the possession of the Council because this is
an area and an agenda that is very much national Member State
driven. There again, the balance is slightly out of kilter, I
would say, and it is more difficult for the European Parliament
to receive all the information. There are also questions of confidentiality,
general sensitivity and political relevance. It is a very difficult
area.
Q407 Chairman: I have seen in relation
to certain proposals, Rome I sticks in the mind, substantial parliamentary
input from the committees which has then been effectively reversed
when it has gone through the triage procedure so that very wide-ranging
proposals for extensions and amendments have ultimately led to
relatively little. Is that a common pattern or does the Parliament
have a substantial input into other legislation?
Mr Harley: I think that I would have difficulty
in answering that at this stage actually. I have reference here
to the visa waiver regime, the passenger name record, as well
as another area where the European Parliament did have fairly
considerable influence and in a celebrated technical case brought
the PNR ruling to the European Court of Justice. It is difficult
for the Parliament to ensure, as we would like to see it, the
necessary preparation and quality of the legislation. I am searching.
Yes, on the Treaty of Prüm on police co-operation, this was
initially drafted without taking into account the pending Commission
proposals and then it was submitted for ratification, so I am
informed, by national parliaments without any proper explanatory
statement. The Lisbon Treaty with the minimum threshold should
help and rationalise that kind of initiative.
Q408 Lord Wright of Richmond: My
Lord Chairman, I will just comment on Prüm because it emerged
from a meeting of interior ministers of only a few of the Member
States. Admittedly the larger States, but nevertheless. Can I
just ask if you have got anything to say about the relationship
between the European Parliament and national parliaments? Is it
changing and, if so, how? In particular, is it likely to change
even further under the Lisbon Treaty?
Mr Harley: Thank you very much for putting that
question. I think that may be the most important question for
the European Parliament at the moment. Certainly the relationship
will change under the Lisbon Treaty in many ways. I would suggest
there are two levels of relations to be looked at. There are the
relations as between the national parliaments themselves and the
second level would be relations between national parliaments collectively,
when they do operate collectively, and the European Parliament.
As you will know, among the other innovations in the Treaty are
the early warning system and the system of orange and yellow cards,
and COSAC is likely to become even more important, COSAC which
has been meeting over the last three days in Ljubljana. It would
also appear that the new arrangements under the Lisbon Treaty
would permit national parliaments to communicate directly and
to benefit from, if they so wish, a direct channel of communication
between the national parliaments and the institutions of the European
Union without necessarily going through their respective national
governments, which is an interesting new development. There are
the specific provisions of the Lisbon Treaty referring in particular
to subsidiarity and also proportionality, but then there is the
general prescription to promote European inter-parliamentary co-operation.
This is potentially an extremely interesting new area and I would
even venture to suggest that there could be a communications dimension
to all this, that if we manage to facilitate knowledge and understanding
of how Brussels works and how legislation is processed in national
parliaments which do not necessarily always have committees with
the same expertise as yourselves, then in turn this would facilitate,
if one is optimistic, the job of national parliamentarians to
inform and represent their constituents on EU business. I think
it is a very exciting and stimulating area, and hopefully with
a lot of positive implications. In the European Parliament we
welcome this and also the fact that the Commission since September
2006 under the so-called Barroso Initiative has taken the initiative
itself to send forward draft legislative proposals to the national
parliaments and, as a European Parliament, we would like to work
more closely with the Commission on a pre-legislative dialogue.
There are many different areas that have to be sorted out here,
but with considerable mutual benefit if handled correctly.
Q409 Chairman: You said you would
like to work more closely with the Commission, and do I gather
from what you said also with national parliaments?
Mr Harley: Very definitely, yes. There is already
growing increasing and considerable contact. Over the last two
or three years there has been more and more committee-to-committee
contact and I believe that should also be encouraged. There is
the IPEX system of exchanging information through a common database.
From a more political/institutional point of view, we feel that
it is now up to the national parliaments first of all to decide
how they wish to adapt, in as much as they have to adapt, to the
provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. In the second stage the national
parliaments and European Parliament can get together and see where
they can work together, identify common interests or even agree
to disagree. We feel it is important that the national parliaments
themselves should take the initiative of deciding among themselves
how this should be done.
Q410 Lord Burnett: Have you actually
precipitated any such discussions within the parliaments of Member
States or are you waiting for them to do something?
Mr Harley: The subtext of what I am saying is
we do not want to give the impression that we are imposing anything
on the national parliaments, and this is an opportunity for the
national parliaments to become more involved in the machinery
and the legislative business of the EU institutions. We are waiting
and seeing, but not from a passive point of view. Where there
are cases as there have been, and I am sure there will be more,
of other specific national parliaments who wish to have closer
relations with the European Parliament, we are delighted to take
up their invitation.
Q411 Chairman: Just focusing on the
requirement to submit to national parliaments draft legislative
acts, proposals from the Commission initiatives from a group of
states, et cetera, that is at a very early stage, is it not? This
is the first time the document emerges as a proposal.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Q412 Chairman: Even though subsequently
it may, in the ordinary course, be revised and changed you have
got to make a comment within eight weeks of the proposal.
Mr Harley: And basically only on subsidiarity.
Q413 Chairman: Which is quite a big
issue to analyse.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Q414 Lord Rosser: But it is just
on subsidiarity?
Mr Harley: Yes. I do not know if this is what
you are saying, but it may not work.
Q415 Chairman: It is a question in
that direction. It is a very short time and subsidiarity is quite
a complex yet narrow issue in a sense.
Mr Harley: We feel it is a kind of foot in the
door and an opportunity to do more and to go beyond the relatively
narrow confines of subsidiarity, and that is why I mentioned earlier
the idea of pre-legislative dialogue if there is a wish to do
that.
Lord Burnett: But I can see parliamentary colleagues
making quite a big meal of subsidiarity and pinning everything
on it. Having been in the other place, it is remarkable how ingenious
my colleagues were and are.
Q416 Chairman: Your point that the
comments could, in practice, go further is an interesting one
because they would have a value, they would reach you and you
would be able to pick up comments on any subject.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Chairman: That is an important additional point.
Q417 Lord Rosser: Unless it has been
changed, as I understand it, the Lisbon Treaty introduces the
EU Citizens' Initiative.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Q418 Lord Rosser: In which citizens
can submit proposals and I think there could be rather a large
number. That does not seem to have been mentioned very much by
people we have been talking to. You have not mentioned it and
we have not asked you directly either. Is it a gimmick?
Mr Harley: I would hope not.
Q419 Lord Rosser: Nobody seems to
mention it as some good new initiative.
Mr Harley: I have not mentioned it, first of
all, from a rather kind of narrow turf-war perspective because
the Citizens' Initiatives under the Treaty are addressed to the
Commission, there is no involvement of the European Parliament,
and we are slightly kind of sniffy about it because we have our
own Petitions Committee and we like the idea of EU citizens being
able to address the European Parliament directly. We are not quite
sure where this new idea fits into the existing set-up or structure.
I would not say it was a gimmick but it will be interesting to
see how effective it really is in practice. I think few people
would say this is a wonderful idea and guaranteed to be successful.
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