Examination of Witness (Questions 420-437)
Mr David Harley
8 MAY 2008
Q420 Lord Rosser: One of the things
we are looking at is where ideas originate from and what shapes
them in reality. Your immediate reaction to it is you do not see
this as a great source of new ideas that subsequently become subject
to legislative proposals?
Mr Harley: In our existing petitions system
in the European Parliament we have quite rigid, strict rules to
examine petitions and then to decide if they are admissible. If
they are considered admissible there is an opportunity to set
up a committee of inquiry and this has been done in at least two
cases of particular interest to the United Kingdom, first of all
on BSE in 1997 and more recently on Equitable Life. At the end
of that process of the committee of inquiry on Equitable Life,
the report adopted by the Parliament came forward with a number
of fairly specific suggestions for the Commission and were also
forwarded to the British Government. We are quite satisfied with
that existing process and procedure and, apart from the involvement
of great numbers of European citizens and the feeling, therefore,
that people may wish to have the right to put their concerns to
the institutions in Brussels from a public relations point of
view, that is useful, but we have already had an online petition
signed by one and a half million about the seat of the European
Parliament, not necessarily a subject we wish to get into this
afternoon. Under the existing procedures and system, that is also
already possible.
Q421 Chairman: What is it going to
mean? All the provision says, Article 11(4) of the TEU, is that
not less than a million citizens who are nationals of Member States
may take the initiative in inviting the Commission within its
powers to submit any appropriate proposal. Unless the European
Court is going to say that there is some obligation on the Commission
to act, or at least to give reasons for not acting or something
like that, this is an invitation in the air which any individual
citizen could make.
Mr Harley: Yes. Without wishing to be disrespectful
to your Committee, I would not wish to find myself in the position
of having to defend this provision.
Q422 Chairman: It is not for you
primarily.
Mr Harley: No. It sounds very similar to what
already exists in Italy. I do not know if, by any chance, it was
an Italian proposal. If they have a million people who want a
referendum in Italy, they have a referendum.
Q423 Chairman: That is slightly different,
that may compel a referendum.
Mr Harley: Yes.
Q424 Chairman: Can I just change
the subject slightly and ask you about the process of engagement
by the Parliament with stakeholders and lobbyists. We have heard
quite a lot from the Commission side about consultation, lobbying
and so on. How relevant is that to the Parliament and how helpful
and influential is such engagement with stakeholders and lobbyists?
Mr Harley: I think the fairly conventional views
on the usefulness of lobbyists and their role in a pluralistic
dialogue and providing information for members hold true. You
may have heard that the European Parliament today voted an important
report on lobbyists and has asked for a common register and a
mandatory system of registration for lobbyists common to all the
institutions.
Q425 Chairman: Of interests?
Mr Harley: Yes. We think that lobbyists properly
registered and regulated perform a useful function in the legislative
process. We encourage lobbyists.
Q426 Chairman: Will that cover their
activities at least on a general basis, the areas in which they
lobby and so on?
Mr Harley: Yes. They will have to declare where
they come from and what they do.
Q427 Lord Burnett: Do they have to
declare financial contributions and things like that to political
parties, to individuals, campaigns?
Mr Harley: According to the resolution adopted
today there should be full financial disclosure.
Q428 Baroness O'Cathain: There has
not been up to now?
Mr Harley: No.
Q429 Chairman: We have heard that
the Commission actually funds some NGOs because it wishes to receive
views on certain subjects, such as the environment, and we have
heard it funds a lot of NGOs in that area, the World Wildlife
Fund and so on. Does the Parliament do anything similar to ensure
it gets views reflected at it in certain areas?
Mr Harley: No.
Q430 Lord Bowness: Just following
on from this lobbying point, one of our witnesses told us that
the most powerful and successful lobbyists were the Member States.
Are they equally engaged? Do you think that some countries' MEPs
are more susceptible to pressure from national governments than
others? From the point of view of the Parliament, do you see different
countries seeking to exercise their influence in different ways?
I am tempted to ask you to give examples, but perhaps that might
be a step too far.
Mr Harley: Presumably, as also in national politics,
the relationship between government and parliament and representatives
of the government, ministers and MPs or parliamentarians, is very
important. It is legitimate for a government to impress upon MEPs
of their nationality how they consider their national interests
should be best represented. I think many people in Brussels feel
that the British Government is actually particularly effective
at providing information and a good service to British Members
of the European Parliament. The way that relationship evolves
is also perhaps to some extent determined by differences in national
political cultures. Some national political cultures provide or
result in a relatively more or less corporatist approach than
others, whereas other national political cultures put a premium
on individuality and division and the concept of a shared national
interest across party political lines is more difficult to establish.
Q431 Lord Norton of Louth: Could
I link what you have been saying about lobbyists and come back
to the point about national parliaments because, in a sense, national
parliaments are lobbyists in a way because they may be trying
to put a particular point across, say through the European Parliament,
and some lobbying organisations presumably are quite effective
in terms of being able to communicate a particular view and, of
course, national parliaments have to compete for the ear of the
European Parliament. It is a bit difficult to generalise, but
how well-resourced are national parliaments in Brussels to make
their case to the European Parliament?
Mr Harley: One relatively little known fact
is that each parliament of the 27 Member States, indeed each chamber
of each national parliament, is provided with an office by the
European Parliament here in Brussels with basic infrastructure
and office facilities. There is now a system which has grown considerably
over the last few years of permanent parliamentary representatives
of each Member State. Again, the national political and parliamentary
cultures differ so much that it is difficult to generalise on
the effectiveness, funding and resources provided from the capitals
for each of these representatives. I think that the presence of
national parliaments in Brussels is certainly growing. I feel
that it is more a question of obtaining information, exchanging
information and pressing a case than overtly and explicitly lobbying,
but that may come if we get into this space of more general European
inter-parliamentary co-operation going beyond subsidiarity and
possibly in terms of pre-legislative contact. In other words,
when there are parliaments of some Member States who can see that
items going through the legislative process of the European Parliament
involve their own national interests then there could be interesting
alliances and that could be part of the future.
Q432 Lord Wright of Richmond: Are
these representatives, representatives of the majority party or
is it up to each parliament to decide?
Mr Harley: They are civil servants.
Chairman: I remind Members of the Sub-Committee
that we recently met Ed Lock, the Lords' Brussels representative.
Lord Wright of Richmond: Each of our chambers
has got one person in this Brussels-based department.
Chairman: I have to say, the process of liaison
is not so visible probably to Members of the Committee as it is
to the Clerks and Legal Advisers, but it is there and no doubt
very important. I do not know whether Lady O'Cathain would like
to pursue the last question which is within a territory she has
looked at previously?
Q433 Baroness O'Cathain: I would
like to know what your views are on the proposal for Better Law
Making and did the Parliament get involved in that, and how effective
is it?
Mr Harley: The Parliament got involved in Better
Law Making from 2003 up until 2005. There was the Inter-Institutional
Agreement and there is also reference to Better Law Making in
the Framework Agreement that regulates relations between the Parliament
and the Commission. My personal view, however, is that the situation
has stagnated over the last two years, particularly in terms of
relations between the Parliament and the Commission. There are
virtually no contacts any longer. There is a High Level Technical
Group between the Parliament and the Commission which has not
met for at least two years.
Q434 Baroness O'Cathain: Is there
any reason for that? Have you just decided that all the law making
is great now and you do not need Better Law Making?
Mr Harley: We feel in the Parliament that the
Commission did not wish to continue. Again, if you will pardon
the word, there was something of a disconnect, as indeed there
often is, between the Commission and the Parliament in that the
Commission would send along senior officials and the Parliament
felt, despite the important technical dimension of Better Law
Making, this was also intrinsically an important political issue,
so it was difficult to put senior elected politicians together
with senior officials from the Commission, as we saw it, to negotiate
at the same level. I would say this issue will definitely be revived
in the context of the negotiations between the institutions, and
particularly between the Parliament and the Commission, on the
implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. It was considered by the
Parliament and it is on the shopping list of our ten, if not demands
then priority areas that have to be sorted out to make sure that
the Lisbon Treaty works in terms of inter-institutional relations.
We would also like to involve the Council more, not just the Commission,
in this exercise.
Q435 Chairman: Is one problem that
if you are looking to meet very senior Commission personnel, and
in particular if you are looking to meet the Commission personnel
at the political level, at the Commissioner level, that could
only happen, because of the way the Commission takes decisions
at a very late stage, in the production of a legislative proposal
and by then it would have gone through all the internal vetting
process right up to the senior level, so by then there might be
no purpose in meeting. Is that a problem?
Mr Harley: That is probably why we seem to have
got a bit stuck on this. Useful work was done, as I said, two
or three years ago on soft law, on comitology, et cetera. What
is missing, if you will permit me to say, from where I work in
the Directorate General of the Presidency, which is basically
primarily responsible, amongst other things, for the organisation
of the plenary sessions, we find it incredibly difficult to co-ordinate
legislative planning with the Commission and the Council.[36]
I chair a meeting once a month with senior officials from the
Commission and the Council, but basically there are three different
and dissonant legislative programmes from the Parliament, the
Commission and the Council. This means that the decision-making
stages in the process are all staggered. The European Parliament
takes a decision, sort of, next month in Strasbourg and then the
same issue will be the subject of a decision by the Council six
months later and then the Commission may revise its proposal.
This makes it very difficult for the outside world to understand
how the system works when you have finally arrived at decision
time. We would like to use Better Law Making and the Lisbon Treaty
to improve legislative programming between the three institutions
to provide better quality of legislation, a more understandable
process and easier access for public opinion to what we are doing
and an easier way to communicate the benefits, where there are
benefits, to European citizens.
Q436 Chairman: Does the comitology
process not bring all three institutions together at some point?
Mr Harley: But not in a way that is understandable
to the rest of the world. If we could move into an area where
there could be some degree of shared political priorities between
the three institutions that would also be helpful. At the moment
we happen to be in a situation where there are four or five key
policy proposals going through the system of the three institutions
which also coincide, I would guess, with British Government priorities:
climate change, energy unbundling, telecommunications, the Small
Business Act. All of these are issues where there is a clear majority
in the European Parliament and in the other two institutions,
but all the decisions are being taken at different times. It is
going to be a race against time to get any decision at all on
these key issues before the European elections, quite apart from
the fact that there are significant Member States who do not want
the decisions to be taken anyway, or at least would like to slow
them down. That is the area where we really have to fight at technical,
political and inter-institutional levels if we want to produce
results in a common interest.
Q437 Baroness O'Cathain: It does
seem that there is a lot of tension there. Is there any way that
can be resolved?
Mr Harley: It is creative tension.
Chairman: On that extremely tactful note, can
we thank you very much indeed for your very interesting evidence.
36 Supplementary comment by the witness on reading
the transcript: In fact, a better cooperation with the Commission
has been developed, in particular as regards the Commission's
Annual Legislative and Work Programme. However, the cooperation
with the Council in this area still needs to improve considerably.
The situation may change with the entry into force of the Treaty
of Lisbon, which provides the legal base to facilitate the inter-institutional
cooperation with regard to legislative planning. Article 17 of
the Treaty on European Union states that: "[The Commission]
shall initiate the Union's annual and multi-annual programming
with a view to achieving inter-institutional agreements." Back
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