Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 192)
THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER 2007
Professor Helen Wallace CMG FBA
Q180 Lord Maclennan of Rogart:
It has been suggested to us that there might be an upward pressure
on the budget as a result of these changes with regard to budgetary
procedure. Do you think that is a fair concern?
Professor Wallace: I presume the budget will
still be subject to the limits about the margins and manoeuvre
and the room for growth, will they not? I see the pressures for
growth in the budget in quite other areas. It seems to me that
the logical pressures of growth in the budget are much more in
the fields, broadly speaking, of those that relate to justice
and home affairs and, broadly speaking, those that relate to Common
Foreign and Security Policy. Whether or not it is a good thing
that there is now a legal base in the new Treaty for some of the
budgetary resources which may be allocated for foreign and security
policy to be outside the EU budget and subject to a different
procedure is not entirely clear to me. I am more concerned about
getting to grips with that and less concerned on the agriculture
side.
Q181 Baroness Cohen of Pimlico:
I am responsible for the EU Sub-Committee here which deals with
finance and we were disposed to see two things as enormously important:
first, the distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure
had been abolished; second, agriculture and fisheries now came
within the ambit of the European Parliament. We hoped for all
sorts of wonderful downward effects on the Common Agricultural
Policy. Are we being much too optimistic?
Professor Wallace: I hope you are being realistic.
Q182 Baroness Cohen of Pimlico:
It seemed to us enormously important.
Professor Wallace: I agree with you and I always
thought it was perverse and unhelpful that in the past they were
protected from it, particularly because what that meant was that
ministers of agriculture have been able to operate as a collusive
club with rather little external scrutiny and in a way which was
not very easy for national parliaments to get any handles on either.
The members of the European Parliament need to be encouraged to
be vigorous.
Q183 Chairman:
Could you talk to us a little bit about the impact of the Treaty
on the functioning and powers of the Commission? In particular,
is the Presidency of the Commission moving towards a more presidential
style?
Professor Wallace: I find it very hard to read
the likely outcomes for the Commission of the new provisions in
the Treaty. I say that in a context where, if you are taking a
long view, there has been something of a secular decline of the
Commission in the system generally and part of the embedding of
the European Council is an illustration of that in this new Treaty.
I do not see this Treaty as having lots of obvious prizes for
the Commission in the way it operates in the institutional system
with perhaps two exceptions. One is that it has a clearer role
now in justice and home affairs which it has worked very hard
for and, depending on how it develops in the External Action Service
and how far the Commission itself is astute in helping to develop
that. The general outcomes are quite difficult to read. There
is also a kind of fudge in the Treaty about the eventual membership
of the College. Although it says that the membership of the College
shall be reduced to two thirds of the number of Member States,
it is not clear and there is an opportunity to rescind that. We
know very well that most Member States are very reluctant to lose
the notion of a Commissioner of their nationality. We are not
out of the woods on the membership of the College is what I am
saying. I would always have preferred a drastically smaller College
which was more like the governing body of the European Central
Bank, for example. However, I understand that is not a negotiable
proposition. On the President of the Commission himself or herself,
history tells us that quite a lot depends on the individual. If
you look over time, irrespective of the formal powers of the President
of the Commission, there have been huge variations in effectiveness
and outcomes. People say already in the larger College, where
you now have 27 Commissioners, many of whom now have quite small
portfolios, that in practice the President is becoming much more
important or has the scope for operating in a more presidential
way. It seems to be the case already now that fewer things go
to the full College for full debate in oral sessions; it is a
bit like the Court of Justice in that much more is done in smaller
chambers and groupings. Obviously a President who is skilful is
in a position to exploit that. There is a lot to be worked out
because the relationship between the President and the High Representative
is going to be quite testing, just as the relationship of the
High Representative with the rest of the Council is going to be
difficult. As I mentioned earlier, the relationship with the full-time
President of the European Council is also going to be tricky.
It could go a number of ways and the bit I find really hard to
read is how, under the proposed new arrangements for selecting
and electing the President of the Commission, the dynamics of
the relationship with the Parliament may also have some impact.
It may be that we shall see Presidents in the future under the
new system having to be vigilant towards the Parliament in a slightly
different way from that in the past.
Q184 Chairman:
I am sure that danger must exist. It is quite likely, during European
Parliamentary elections, that the parties will come forward perhaps
with their particular standard-bearers for the Presidency and
that the one who gets elected will feel beholden to a particular
party or group.
Professor Wallace: Yes; absolutely.
Chairman: It sounds to me a very unsatisfactory
situation.
Q185 Baroness Cohen of Pimlico:
I want to ask about the High Representative. I wondered how you
saw the new double-hatted post of High Representative working.
Is his or her status as a member of the Commission going to be
problematic? How are they going to get on with the President?
Generally it seemed to us a bit unworked out.
Professor Wallace: It is a very experimental
proposal. I am not a huge fan of the proposal myself. It is really
quite difficult to tell how it will work in practice. I do not
think that it is going to be the critical breakthrough in the
foreign policy field for achieving more efficiency and more effectiveness.
In a way I kind of prefer a situation in which there is a visible
and audible ping-pong between the Council and the Commission because
they are there to do different things in the system, in this sense,
for the Commission to represent what it believes to be a collective
interest and the Council, however it reaches its views, to reach
its views on the basis of the preferences of Member States. It
is hard to see how the different triangles are going to work—High
Representative, President of the European Council and President
of the Commission—both internally and externally. We talked
about this earlier in relation to the President of the European
Council. I am quite nervous about how that will work in practice,
at the level of individuals and personalities and at the level
of secretariat, the different working groups and so on. How the
European External Action Service develops is obviously one important
element there and we can see a proliferation of propositions and
positioning going on at the moment about how that will develop.
If I may add, there is another thing I am also nervous about:
the way this is all set out into the new Treaty. It starts by
saying external action then it slips straightaway into foreign
policy and security policy. A lot of the strengths of the Union
lie in other areas of external action, that is to say trade, development
policy, humanitarian aid, a whole bundle of things which are quite
important. It is not at all obvious either how the FOREIGN POLICY,
in capital letters, part is going to be tied in within the Commission
or the Council to those other instruments of external policy.
I am quite nervous about that.
Q186 Lord Powell of Bayswater:
Would I be right in interpreting you as being rather disappointed
that an opportunity has been missed to give greater coherence
to the various external aspects of how Europe relates to the rest
of the world? It seems to me that you are saying that there is
too big a superstructure, there is too much confusion and the
various instruments are not pulled together. We may even be worse
off than we were before.
Professor Wallace: I do not know whether we
will be worse off or better off. My hope is that we would find
a way of becoming better off. Since we live in a rather troublesome
time in which there is a rather troubled world there is a demand
for interventions and actions of various kinds from the European
Union, both in the foreign and security policy area, but also
in putting together the different dimensions of policy, for example
in dealing with Russia, China and so on and so forth. I said right
at the beginning, and I believe it to be true, that sometimes
things get worked out by practice and if we were going back and
now looking at the original Rome Treaty there are many things
with which we might be uncomfortable and uncertain about how they
would work in practice. We would not speculate correctly about
which were going to be the successes and the weaknesses necessarily.
Maybe we have to be a bit cautious before leaping to conclusions,
but I am concerned that there should be pressure on those who
will have to take forward these not entirely coherent arrangements
that they will move in a direction of achieving more effectively.
Q187 Chairman:
One of the issues which is exercising us quite a lot is the simplified
revision procedure and the other passerelles included in
the Reform Treaty. Could you tell us how you feel about this?
I might just add that last night in the debate on the Treaty in
our Chamber the Lord President of the Council confirmed to us—and
it was the first time I had heard it—that as far as the
passerelles were concerned the original idea that only
the House of Commons would wield the veto and that the House of
Lords would simply have 20 days in which to offer an opinion on
it has been abandoned and, in effect, a decision on whether or
not to veto is a matter for both Houses. It came as a welcome
surprise to me that they had changed their minds on that. That
is just an aside. Let us go back, if we may, to the simplified
revision procedure and see what you think about it.
Professor Wallace: We seem to be facing two
rather extreme variations for changing the Treaties in the future,
that is to say either the very elaborate convention mode for macro
changes or something much more pragmatic for simplified changes.
I am quite attracted to the simplified revision procedure in the
sense that recent experience has perhaps said that one can get
into very deep water when you go into big Treaty reforming processes.
It is quite easy in big Treaty reforming processes for the Christmas
tree to be over-decorated, whether in terms of the substantive
content or in terms of the protocols and declarations that Member
States want to put there. There are areas, and it may be these
points we have just been talking about on managing the external
relations of the EU, where one could imagine that in five years'
time there might emerge a consensus that this or that way of handling
the role of the High Representative might make more sense than
the one which is currently in the Treaty and that a simplified
way of addressing that in a tidying up sense might be quite attractive,
just as I would argue, to keep my same case of climate change,
that if we decided collectively in the Union that some other way
of dealing with carbon emissions required some institutional anchoring—I
am not now talking about big competence issues but implementing,
management issues—to be able to do that would be quite helpful.
I am quite relaxed about that. On the passerelles side,
which is obviously a very related point, I was a little bit sceptical
as to how that would work in relation to justice and home affairs.
I am quite relaxed about the outcome in justice and home affairs,
not least the fact that the activation of it in the past was done
in a rather prudent and thoughtful way. I am open-minded on this.
Q188 Chairman:
Some questions have been raised in some quarters as to whether
the Government here would in fact give time for the two Chambers
to play their role, that it could be in their interest not to.
Professor Wallace: Absolutely; similarly in
other countries as well of course.
Q189 Chairman:
We have mentioned the EU's external action and the contribution
to improving coherence of those actions that the Reform Treaty
may bring. Unless you have anything further to say on that we
can leave that. Could we just hear your views on the role given
to national parliaments generally? Do you feel that this is a
step forward or is it all cosmetic?
Professor Wallace: I am not sure whether it
is a role being given or, perhaps better, a window of opportunity
being opened either by the new yellow card procedure or other
ways of engaging with the regular scrutiny of business. It may
well be, like the previous point you were making, that a lot depends
on what happens country by country and chamber by chamber. I would
expect there to be very large variations between countries as
to how the yellow card procedure might work. The Dutch, when they
talk in their terms about orange cards, seem to be very persuaded
that this is going to be a real opportunity that both chambers
will seize in The Hague. Maybe, if some chambers in one or other
Member State start to be very assiduous, that can create a climate
of expectation which has some impact on expectations in other
countries. To the extent that there is an opportunity, this House
is well placed to exploit it, because this House has such an array
of expertise and experience in dealing with both regular policy
scrutiny and issues of principle and subsidiarity. Maybe the House
of Lords should be aiming to set the benchmark here.
Q190 Chairman:
You are probably familiar with what we sometimes refer to as the
Barroso initiative, which was the undertaking that he gave following
the June Council 2006 that national parliaments could address
the Commission on issues which were not necessarily related to
subsidiarity and proportionality to get a reaction and a response.
I should like to know whether you feel this would fall into the
category of a good window of opportunity. I might add that our
experience so far has been rather good. We have written to the
Commission on a number of occasions pointing out recommendations
made in some of our reports that relate to Commission action and
we have indeed received reaction from them not just saying thank
you for our letter but going point by point through it and saying
that they will be taken into account by the Commission. This seems
to us to be very valuable and in a certain sense could be more
valuable to national parliaments than what is in the Treaty, which
this is not, relating to subsidiarity and proportionality.
Professor Wallace: The point about subsidiarity
and proportionality was a very important red line for some Member
States, especially the Netherlands, so it is there. I think this
President of the Commission, President Barroso, is committed to
the kind of approach you have just described and that it is not
cosmetic on his side; it is very much to do with his understanding
of the relationship that he would prefer between the Commission
and parliaments in the Member States. Obviously one cannot guarantee
that all such presidents or teams of people in the future will
be so sensitive to that, although bedding down the practice now
is obviously something which might help to create precedents for
the future. Of course this House has a huge advantage because
it is the House whose reports on European policy matters have
for a very long time actually been read quite carefully.
Q191 Chairman:
Which of the institutional changes in your view are the most significant
for the UK? It is a tough question and we put it to all our witnesses.
They usually look desperate when we ask it. If you have any off-the-top-of-your-head
views or maybe from deep within your head, we should very much
like to hear them.
Professor Wallace: It is the exam question you
hope not to have to answer. I would give a different answer, if
I may, just so that I can say it. I am sorry that the British
Government have resiled in this Treaty from things they were in
favour of at earlier stages. I am particularly sorry about the
extent to which the British Government are now committed to opt-outs,
opt-ins and so on and about their greater nervousness than in
my view was merited as regards the provisions on the Common Foreign
and Security Policy. As a consequence of that they have made the
Treaty much more complicated in the foreign policy and security
field in ways that will not help British voices to be heard as
clearly and loudly as one might want and certainly as I would
wish. Similarly in justice and home affairs we risk having a good
deal of legal complexity and confusion, which is not necessarily
in the interests of British citizens and residents. The way the
Treaty has come out in this sense is something I regret.
Q192 Lord Powell of Bayswater:
So you share the Government's view that our red lines have neutered
the Treaty in its effect on the UK and therefore it is absurd
for anyone to be worried about it because frankly nothing much
is going to change as far as the UK is concerned? Or do you think
there are still institutional changes which will have a significant,
indeed major impact on us?
Professor Wallace: I think it is the case, but
we have to see how the jurisprudence works out and how real events
occur, that the impact of the Treaty on the UK in justice and
home affairs and foreign policy is less extensive than would otherwise
have been the case with the version to which the Government also
agreed previously in the wording of the Constitutional Treaty.
There are costs to this, we pay a price for that and this is a
price which I personally regret, because it means the British
voice in the foreign policy field will be heard less clearly than
might otherwise have been the case. The risk is that when we find
ourselves dealing with real issues that will be a handicap to
the British. There are other parts of the Treaties which of course
will have probably quite important impacts in the UK.
Chairman: Thank you very, very much indeed
for that. We really appreciate your participation and your very
clear answers to our questions. As a footnote I should mention
that I understand that you were virtually in at the creation of
the European Scrutiny Committee and if not its first that you
were one of the first ever witnesses. We congratulate you on your
long record of cooperation with this Committee and hope we will
see you many more times in future. Thank you very, very much indeed.
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