Examination of Witnesses (Questions 415
- 419)
THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER 2007
Mr Jorge Pegado Liz, Mr Bryan Cassidy and Mr Jean-Pierre
Faure
Q415 Chairman: We are having
this meeting over lunch and, on behalf of Sub-Committee B, I would
like to welcome Mr Bryan Cassidy, Mr Jorge Pegado Liz and Mr Jean-Pierre
Faure to join us as our guests. I would be very grateful if I
could turn to you, Bryan, first of all to put developments in
a bit of a historical perspective.
Mr Cassidy: In a sense the big battles were
fought and won some considerable time ago, beginning in 1987 with
the Single European Act where the Parliament for the first time
got the power to amend the European Commission proposals but then
more dramatically with the launching of the single market programme
in 1992 with Lord Cockfield as the Commissioner responsible, which
achieved a number of giant steps in a relatively short time, taking
examples which benefit consumers, the freedom of the skies, the
opening up of the telecommunications market and in more recent
years the opening up of mobile telecoms, which, of course, in
1992 barely figured in anyone's calculations. Compared with the
heady days of 1991 we are now down to much more workaday and detailed
things like consideration of the Markets in Financial Instruments
Directive (MiFID) or the REACH proposal to do with the assessment
of chemical products, which generate a lot of heat by people intimately
concerned with those industries, to which I would add also the
Services Directive which caused the Parliament a great deal of
anxiety, and indeed we ourselves because we have trade union members
of our committee.
Q416 Chairman: A lot has been
achieved. Are we nearing the end of the period of giant directives
and regulations on the single market and moving more towards implementation?
Mr Cassidy: Yes, and hopefully towards implementation.
I cannot think of major unresolved issues except that some of
the things that are still on the agenda, which are for the Parliament
and the Council, are giant things in their own right, and there
are smaller things which are causing a great deal of anxiety,
for example, `in the country which I know best' (which is the
great phrase used here) about temporary workers.
Q417 Chairman: Thank you.
Jean-Pierre, we are all fascinated by the work of the SMO and
EESC. Perhaps you would just say a brief word about that. I know
Lord James has a specific question for you in just a moment.
Mr Faure: The Economic and Social Committee
is an organ of the EU that was set up in 1957 alongside the other
major institutions. It has a tripartite structure which means
that it sees to it that something like interest group pluralism
is pumped into this EU system. What we want is a consultative
activity which is coherent, organised, visible and transparent
simply because it is institutional but which does not exclude
extra contacts that the Commission may want to have with interest
group lobbies. This is all-inclusive, if you like; one type of
consultation does not exclude the other, so what you want is pluralism,
because civil society is a pluralistic concept, apart from lobbying.
In this respect you allow this kind of qualitative advisory activity
into the EU decision-making process. As far as the SMO is concerned,
it was set up in 1994 but since 2000 we have focused increasingly
on better regulation issues, again, the whole spectrum of items
that you may think of in relation to this. The inter-institutional
agreement on better law-making in 2003 was in a way a starter
to this, but I must say that 2005 was a key year because (a) we
had the UK Presidency and one of the priorities of the UK Presidency
was better regulation and, indeed, we were very actively involved
in this one, as you may remember, Bryan, because we went to Whitehall
and our colleagues from Whitehall came to Brussels. That is where
I met Clelia and we produced an exploratory opinion at the request
of the UK Presidency on better regulation, and at the same time
we started mapping self- and co-regulation initiatives. 80% of
the initiatives collected in the database are of a self-regulatory
nature while 20% fall under co-regulation, so what the SMO (and
by way of consequence the committee) is now about to become—and
I am just back from Berlin from a conference on regulatory reform
in the EU and also outside the EU—is a one-stop shop for
information on self-regulation and co-regulation in particular
and better regulation in general. Again, this is very important:
members of the committee are representative of civil society organisations,
that is, people like you, people who are active in everyday life
and have a say because they know what they are talking about.
We have developed a database, which is actually finalised and
is up and running and will be launched formally in late February.
We draft opinions involving our members, that is, civil society
organisations. We organise hearings to dock on people on the ground
in the various Member States, including lobbyists, and, of course,
we work very closely with the Commission—DG Enterprise,
DG Internal Market, the Secretariat-General, and we want to deepen
our contacts with the Parliament, especially the IMCO committee
and the JURI committees.
Lord James of Blackheath: I have expressed
concern at the lack of clarity as to the control and direction
of internet services provided from within Europe which may go
cross-frontier to the point where they cause sociological and
potentially other problems, because, and I have been thinking
about this as you spoke, it is not just a question of bookmakers;
we ought to extend this to the sale of sexual services and pornography
as well which I think are coming down with exactly the same problems.
I would like the answer to embrace all those aspects please, because
I would find it quite incredible if the European authorities were
to say, "You cannot ban bookmakers from advertising but you
can ban pornography from advertising". There would be no
equity in that arrangement at all, so I would seriously like an
opinion from within Europe as to how this can be brought under
control because both are sociological problems. Internet trading
generally follows from this. There needs to be a code of practice
from Europe on internet trading, which seems to be conspicuous
by its absence at this time and we would like to know much more
about the controls which can be applied nationally from within.
Q418 Chairman: It may be appropriate
for the Committee to suggest that we remit this question to you.
Mr Faure: This is very good.
Mr Pegado Liz: Yes.
Q419 Chairman: Jorge, perhaps
you could comment briefly on the Commission's proposal to introduce
some further research and perhaps initiatives in the field of
SMEs, and particularly a new European small company initiative.
Mr Pegado Liz: I must say that I personally
and the committee are studying nowadays the new initiatives of
the Commission. We read attentively the new package on the single
market and, in general, we found there some new initiatives of
the Commission on SMEs and on consumers as well. These new initiatives,
and especially a new statute for the SMEs in Europe and perhaps
even some immediate new regulations on that aspect and a new policy
approach, will be dealt within an opinion that we are preparing
and, of course, we will be very happy to send it to you even in
the state of draft because I think it is just being drafted. As
soon as it is available we will send it to you.
Chairman: Thank you. We will be taking
evidence this afternoon and Lady Eccles will be pursuing this.
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