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Scrutiny of international agreements; treaties considered on 21 January 2020 Contents

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Scrutiny of international agreements: treaties considered on 21 January 2020

Chapter 1: Agreements reported for information

Agreement establishing an Economic Partnership Agreement between the Southern African Customs Union Member States and Mozambique, of the one part and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of the other part (CP 193, 2019)1

1.The UK-Southern African Customs Union Member States and Mozambique Economic Partnership Agreement (‘the UK-SACUM Agreement’) was laid on 5 November 2019, and the scrutiny period is scheduled to end on 5 February 2020. It was considered by the EU External Affairs Committee at its meeting on 16 January 2020.

Parties to the Agreement and what it covers

2.Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa form the Southern African Customs Union. Collectively, alongside Mozambique, they are the Parties to the Agreement (other than the UK) and are referred to throughout this report as ‘the SACUM countries’.

3.The precursor agreement to the UK-SACUM Agreement is the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Southern African Development Community EPA States (‘the EU Agreement’), signed in June 2016.2 The UK-SACUM Agreement seeks to ensure continuity of effect with the EU Agreement and, consequently, largely replicates it.

4.The Agreement is development-focused and therefore asymmetrical—it opens the UK market more than the market of the SACUM countries. With the exception of South Africa, it provides duty-free and quota-free access to the UK market for goods originating from the SACUM countries and provides for a gradual reduction of duties for UK goods deemed to be sensitive and that are imported into those SACUM countries.

5.Like the underlying EU Agreement, the UK-SACUM Agreement also includes provisions on development cooperation, intellectual property, geographical indications, trade in services and trade remedies.

6.It replicates the language of the Cotonou Agreement3 on respect for human rights and the possible suspension of the Agreement as a last resort in the case of violations of human rights, democratic principles or the rule of law by any of the parties.

Entry into force

7.For the Agreement to enter into force, it must be ratified by both the UK and all the SACUM countries. Unlike other agreements previously considered, it cannot enter into force bilaterally, at different times, between the UK and each signatory SACUM country. The Agreement will only come into force once the precursor EU Agreement ceases to apply to the UK and after all parties have confirmed that their domestic ratification procedures have been completed. Under Article 112(2)(b) of the Agreement, the entry-into-force date can be either 30 days following the deposit of the last notification, or such other date as agreed by the Parties.

8.To ensure continuity, should the UK cease to be a Party to the EU Agreement before ratification processes can be completed, the Agreement allows for provisional application between individual SACUM countries and the UK.

Memorandum of Understanding

9.To bridge the gap between what at the time could have been a no-deal exit on 31 October 2019 and the parties’ ability to provisionally apply the Agreement, the UK and SACUM countries agreed to a non-legally binding MoU. The MoU was a precautionary measure, designed to ensure continuity of trade. It would have affirmed the parties’ intention to apply the EU-SADC EPA mutatis mutandis4 for the period between the EU Agreement ceasing to apply to the UK and the UK-SACUM Agreement taking effect. In the end, the MoU was not required. We do, however, reiterate the point made in our report Scrutiny of international agreements: lessons learned that reliance upon a MoU in such circumstances “blurs the lines between a legally binding international agreement and a politically binding MoU, and raises concerns over the absence of scrutiny of MoUs.”5

The UK’s trade relationship with the SACUM countries

10.Trade with the SACUM countries accounts for 0.7% of UK trade, with South Africa being the dominant trading partner, accounting for 91% of that trade. In 2018, UK trade in goods with all SACUM countries was worth £5.7 billion. The UK imported more goods from the SACUM region than it exported. Main UK exports included goods falling under the ‘machinery and mechanical appliances’, ‘vehicles other than railway or tramway stock’, and ‘electrical machinery and equipment’ categories of the Harmonised System—the international nomenclature for the classification of products. Main goods imports from the SACUM countries fell in the ‘precious stones and metals’, ‘edible fruits and nuts’, and ‘vehicles other than railway or tramway stock’ categories.

11.UK trade in services with the SACUM countries was worth just over £4 billion in 2018. The UK exports more services than it imports, offsetting the trade deficit in goods exports. Sectoral data is available for trade in services with South Africa only, the largest market for UK services. The main services exported to South Africa from the UK in 2018 were in transportation, travel and other business services. Top service imports from South Africa were travel and other business services.

Rules of origin and cumulation

12.The Agreement allows the UK to recognise processing and materials originating in the SACUM countries as UK processing or content; similarly, the SACUM countries may deem processing and materials originating in the UK as SACUM processing or content. However, cumulation between the SACUM countries is not without restrictions. Reflecting the precursor EU Agreement, the UK Agreement imposes some restrictions on exporters in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique and Namibia cumulating certain materials from South Africa in their exports to the UK. Under Article 117(4) of the UK-SACUM Agreement, however, the UK and SACUM countries have agreed to begin a review of these restrictions within 15 months of the Agreement coming into force.

13.Like other trade agreements previously considered by the Committee, the Agreement also introduces an extended cumulation of origin. This allows both Parties to recognise content from the EU as originating in the UK or a SACUM country in exports to one another. EU processing can, under certain conditions, also be recognised in UK exports to SACUM countries and vice versa. The Government notes that, without these provisions, products from the UK or a SACUM country using EU content or processing would no longer meet the origin requirements for preferential treatment by the other party. The Agreement includes a review mechanism, whereby if there is no UK-EU trade agreement in place after three years, the Parties can either extend these cumulation provisions or consider alternatives that are no less beneficial.

14.The Agreement also contains an Origin Quota for prepared or preserved Albacore tuna from Namibia, allowing a specified volume to be exported under a more lenient rule of origin. The quota was resized to reflect the UK’s smaller market size compared to the EU. In resizing the quota, a proxy was used as the UK did not import any tuna products from Namibia under the relevant codes in 2018.

Tariff rate quotas

15.While tariff levels in the UK Agreement will remain the same as in the precursor EU Agreement, tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have been resized to reflect trade flows between the UK and SACUM countries. The UK Government based the resized TRQs on customs, trade flow and usage data. To maintain market access, both sides agreed to provide a minimum level of access by basing TRQs on a proxy measure where data showed historic trade as being very low or non-existent.

Geographical indicators

16.Protections afforded to the geographical indications (GIs) of all Parties under the EU Agreement have been retained. Additionally, UK-Irish cross-border GIs (e.g. Irish Whiskey and Irish Cream) have been included in the UK Agreement.

Wine

17.The UK-SACUM Agreement affirms the importance of the wine trade between South Africa and the UK, and both Parties have agreed to enter into negotiations with a view to facilitating this trade. No start date for these negotiations has been specified.

Trade remedies

18.The Agreement includes a number of trade defence provisions, both for the SACUM countries and the UK.

19.To protect domestic industry and maintain food security in the SACUM countries, the agricultural safeguards in the EU Agreement have been read across. These safeguards enable duties to be imposed if imports of specified agricultural products exceed certain trigger levels.

20.The precursor EU Agreement contains an Entry Price System (EPS), which applies to 15 types of fruit and vegetables from South Africa, ensuring that during the European growing seasons, an additional duty is charged if fruits and vegetables imported are below a pre-determined entry price. The EPS is not being immediately applied by the UK Agreement, but the UK reserves the right to apply it in future.

21.The UK has also transitioned the bilateral safeguards relating to sugar prices, but has agreed with the SACUM countries to suspend the trigger price mechanism for a period of five years, as the appropriate trigger price level is difficult to determine. The mechanism will be reviewed once the Agreement has entered into force. The EU has not previously made use of the trigger price mechanism.

Transitional arrangements

22.Article 118 introduces transitional arrangements to facilitate the implementation of the Agreement by the SACUM countries. For example, it allows the SACUM countries to continue to use, for a specified period, EU customs forms, model health certificates and plant protection certificates.

Future amendments to the Agreement

23.Under Article 116 any Party may submit proposals for amendments to the Agreement, which are then subject to adoption by the Joint Council—the main governance body established under the Agreement. The parliamentary report notes that any amendment that would require changes to UK law would enable Parliament to “scrutinise and debate such changes to UK law in the normal manner”. Yet as we have noted in previous reports, this creates the risk of a scrutiny gap in circumstances where amendments would not require changes to domestic law. Accordingly, we reiterate our previous recommendation that to support appropriate scrutiny in future, the Government should report regularly to Parliament on changes to international agreements.6

24.We welcome the fact that the Government has provided detailed information on the geographical extent of agreements, clarifying which elements would apply to Gibraltar, the Crown Dependencies and the Overseas Territories. We also welcome that the Minister confirms in the EM that “HMG shares stable agreement texts…on individual agreements”. However, while the EM confirms that the Government has shared the draft text of this specific Agreement with Gibraltar, the Crown Dependencies and the Overseas Territories, it does not make clear whether the text was also shared with the devolved administrations prior to signature. This is disappointing, as we have repeatedly asked the Government “to ensure that, in future, where specific agreements have been shared with the DAs, this is explicitly stated in the consultation section of each EM”.7 Following an exchange with officials, we confirmed that the draft Agreement was shared with the devolved administrations and no concerns were raised. We welcome recent confirmation from officials that the Government will specify in future EMs that the specific agreement to which the EM relates has been shared with the devolved administrations.

25.We report the UK-SACUM Economic Partnership Agreement to the House for information.

Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Georgia (CP 196, 2019)8

26.The UK-Georgia Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Agreement was laid on 4 November 2019, and the scrutiny period is scheduled to end on 4 February 2020. It was considered by the EU External Affairs Committee at its meeting on 16 January 2020.

27.The precursor agreement to the UK-Georgia Agreement is the EU-Georgia Association Agreement,9 which entered into force in 2016. The UK Agreement replicates the trade-related provisions of the EU Agreement, removing all tariffs and quotas on goods, and includes provisions on services, intellectual property, geographical indications and government procurement. The Agreement also includes cooperation commitments in areas such as foreign, political and security matters.

28.Once it is ratified by both Parties, the Agreement will come into force on the day the EU Agreement ceases to apply to the UK.10 To ensure continuity, should the UK cease to be a Party to the EU Agreement before ratification processes can be completed, the Agreement allows for provisional application.

29.The UK’s trade with Georgia accounts for less than 0.1% of UK trade. The UK has a trade surplus in both goods and services. The main goods exported to Georgia in 2018 included goods falling under the ‘vehicles other than railway or tramway stock’, ‘pharmaceutical products’, and ‘machinery and mechanical appliances’ categories of the Harmonised System—the international nomenclature for the classification of products. The main UK goods imports from Georgia were goods in the ‘precious stones and metals’, ‘fertilisers’, and ‘iron and steel’ categories.

30.Like other trade agreements previously considered by the Committee, the Agreement introduces an extended cumulation of origin. This allows both Parties to recognise materials from the EU as originating in the UK or Georgia in exports to one another. EU processing can, under certain conditions, also be recognised in UK exports to Georgia and vice versa. The Government sets out that, without these provisions, products from the UK or Georgia using EU content or processing would no longer meet the origin requirements for preferential treatment by the other party.

31.Wider cumulation provisions also apply to both parties. Subject to free trade agreements between the UK, Georgia and the following countries, products and materials originating in the EFTA states (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), Turkey and other parties to the PEM Convention11 can also be counted as originating in the UK or Georgia, subject to minimum working or processing requirements. For the UK (though not for Georgia), wider cumulation provisions also apply to ‘working and processing’ as working and processing carried out in Iceland or Norway can also count as having been conducted in the UK.

32.The UK-Georgia Agreement, like the EU-Georgia Agreement it seeks to replicate, removes tariffs across all goods. There is only a single inward Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ), which applies to garlic imports from Georgia.

33.Protections afforded to the geographical indications (GIs) of all Parties under the EU Agreement have been retained. UK-Irish cross-border GIs (e.g. Irish Whiskey and Irish Cream) have also been included in the UK Agreement.

34.The EU-Georgia Agreement contains an Entry Price System (EPS), which applies to 28 types of fruits and vegetables. It ensures that during the European growing seasons, an additional duty is charged if incoming fruits and vegetables are below a pre-determined entry price. The UK-Georgia Agreement does not establish such an EPS, but the UK reserves the right to establish and implement one in the future. The UK would need to notify Georgia in advance of its intent to apply an EPS. It would only apply to the 28 types of fruits and vegetables that the EU EPS applies to and it would replicate the EU’s price and additional duty levels.

35.The UK-Georgia Agreement, like its predecessor EU Agreement, also applies an anti-circumvention mechanism to 15 categories of agricultural products. This is designed to prevent third countries from exporting certain agricultural goods to the EU via Georgia and benefit from its trade preferences. After reaching a determined threshold level of imports, if Georgia has not provided “sound justification that [it] has the capacity to produce the products for export into the United Kingdom in excess of the volumes set out”, the UK may temporarily suspend the preferential treatment of the specified goods in the product category, and any further imports would be subject to the UK’s MFN rate.

36.The institutional and governance provisions relating to the Agreement allow for significant amendments. Under Article 362 of the UK-Georgia Agreement, the Parties may mutually agree to amend the text of the Agreement subject to “each Party’s internal legal procedures”. According to the parliamentary report, in the UK “amendments to the Agreement that are expressly subject to a formal exchange of notes to confirm completion of internal procedures would engage the process of Parliamentary scrutiny set out in the Constitutional Reform Act [CRAG Act] 2010”.12 We again reiterate our previous recommendation that to support appropriate scrutiny, the Government should report regularly to Parliament on changes to international agreements.13

37.The Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Forum (the ‘Forum’, replacing the EU-Georgia Association Council), which oversees the operation and implementation of the Agreement, may also make modifications in specified technical areas. These amendments would be unlikely to engage the parliamentary scrutiny process under the CRAG Act. To avoid a scrutiny gap, we recommend that when the Government reports on changes to international agreements, it should include changes made by bodies such as the Forum of the UK-Georgia Agreement.

38.In line with most continuity trade agreements scrutinised by the Committee, this Agreement does not replicate the mechanism for bilateral parliamentary engagement existing in the EU-Georgia Agreement. With limited exceptions, the Government has avoided re-establishing Parliamentary Committees in previous international agreements on the basis that it did not wish to bind the UK Parliament without prior consultation. However, the Agreement states that “nothing in this Agreement shall restrict cooperation between the UK Parliament and the Parliament of Georgia”.

39.Unlike the EU-Georgia Agreement, the UK-Georgia Agreement incorporates explicit references to the Russia-Georgia conflict, UK support for Georgia’s territorial integrity, and the Parties’ aim to achieve a peaceful resolution. It also provides for a Strategic Political Dialogue “on all areas of mutual interest, including foreign and security matters as well as domestic reform”.

40.We welcome the fact that the Government has provided detailed information on the geographical extent of agreements, clarifying which elements would apply to Gibraltar and to the Crown Dependencies. We also welcome that the Minister confirms in the EM that “we now share text of agreements, once stable, with the DAs [devolved administrations]”. However, while FCO officials have since explained that regular meetings have taken place with the devolved administrations on the Agreement, they have not confirmed that the text of the Agreement was also shared with the devolved administrations prior to signature. Our views on this issue are set out in paragraph 24 above.

41.We report the UK-Georgia Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Agreement to the House for information.

Agreement establishing an Association between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Lebanon (CP183, 2019)14

42.The UK-Lebanon Association Agreement was laid on 22 October 2019, and the scrutiny period is scheduled to end on 22 January 2020. It was considered by the EU External Affairs Committee at its meeting on 16 January.

43.The precursor to the UK-Lebanon Agreement is the EU-Lebanon Agreement,15 which entered into force in 2006. It incorporates a trade agreement and outlines a framework for political, economic, social and cultural cooperation. The UK-Lebanon Agreement seeks to ensure continuity of effect with the EU Agreement by incorporating it mutatis mutandis with only a small number of modifications. Consequently, it has been published in short form. The Agreement also incorporates the EU-Lebanon Dispute Settlement Mechanism Protocol.16

44.For the Agreement to enter into force, it must be ratified by both the UK and Lebanon. The Agreement will come into force either on the day the EU Agreement ceases to apply to the UK, or when both Parties have confirmed that their domestic ratification procedures have been completed (whichever is the later). Article 11 of the Agreement allows for provisional application. This is to ensure continuity should there be a gap if the UK ceases to be a party to EU Agreements before ratification processes can be completed.

45.Trade with Lebanon accounts for less than 0.1% of UK trade. In 2018, UK services exports were worth £192 million and UK goods exports accounted for £486 million. Main UK goods exports include pharmaceutical products, vehicles and goods falling under the ‘machinery and mechanical appliances’ category of the Harmonised System—the international nomenclature for the classification of products. Main UK goods imports from Lebanon include goods in the ‘beverages, spirits and vinegar’, the ‘preparations of vegetables, fruit or nuts’, and goods in the ‘plastics and articles thereof’ category.

46.The Agreement—like other trade agreements previously considered by the Committee—introduces an extended cumulation of origin. This allows both parties to recognise content from the EU as originating in the UK or Lebanon in exports to one another. The Government notes that, without these provisions, products from the UK or Lebanon incorporating EU materials would no longer meet the origin requirements for preferential treatment by the other party.17 EU processing can, under certain conditions, also be recognised in UK exports to Lebanon (though not vice versa).18

47.While tariff levels in the UK Agreement will remain the same as in the precursor EU Agreement, tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have been resized to reflect trade flows between the UK and Lebanon. The UK Government based the resized TRQs on customs, trade flow and usage data. To maintain market access, both sides agreed to provide a minimum level of access by basing TRQs on a proxy measure where data showed historic trade as being very low or non-existent.

48.The UK-Lebanon Agreement, like its predecessor EU Agreement, does not include substantive commitments on the protection of geographical indicators (GIs)—the EU has only sought to incorporate extensive GI provisions in its trade agreements since 2009. Instead, the UK-Lebanon Agreement (like the EU Agreement) refers to broader international standards and commitments on intellectual property rights.

49.The institutional and governance provisions of the Agreement allow for significant amendments. Under Article 10 of the UK-Lebanon Agreement, the Parties may mutually agree to amend the text of the Agreement subject to “each Party’s internal legal procedures”. According to the parliamentary report, in the UK “amendments to the Agreement that are expressly subject to a formal exchange of notes to confirm completion of internal procedures would engage the process of Parliamentary scrutiny set out in the CRaG Act”.19 This risks leaving a scrutiny gap in those circumstances where amendments would not require a formal exchange of notes (see paragraph 23 above).

50.The Association Council and Association Committee—the main governance bodies established under the Agreement—may also make modifications in specified technical areas. These amendments would be unlikely to engage the parliamentary scrutiny process under the CRAG Act—our concerns on this issue are set out in paragraph 37 above.

51.We welcome the fact that the Government has provided detailed information on the geographical extent of agreements, clarifying which elements would apply to Gibraltar and to the Crown Dependencies. We also welcome that the Minister confirms in the EM that “HMG shares stable agreement texts…on individual agreements”. However, while the EM confirms that the Government has shared the draft text of this specific Agreement with Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies, it does not make clear whether the text was also shared with the devolved administrations prior to signature. Our views on this issue are set out in paragraph 24 above.

52.Following an exchange with officials, we confirmed that the Agreement was shared with the devolved administrations when it was initialled. We welcome confirmation from officials that the Government will make clear in future EMs when stable texts have been shared with the devolved administrations.

53.We report the UK-Lebanon Association Agreement to the House for information.

Agreement establishing an Association between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Tunisia (CP 188, 2019)20

54.The UK-Tunisia Association Agreement was laid on 25 October 2019, and the scrutiny period is scheduled to end on 27 January 2020. It was considered by the EU External Affairs Committee at its meeting on 16 January 2020.

55.The precursor agreement to the UK-Tunisia Agreement is the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement,21 which entered into force in 1998. The UK-Tunisia Agreement seeks to ensure continuity of effect with the EU Agreement by incorporating it mutatis mutandis with only a small number of modifications. Consequently, the UK Agreement has been published in short form. The UK-Tunisia Agreement also incorporates the EU-Tunisia Dispute Settlement Mechanism Protocol22.

56.Like the EU-Tunisia Agreement, the UK-Tunisia Association Agreement eliminates tariffs on industrial goods, and progressively reduces tariffs on agricultural, agri-food and fisheries products. It also contains provisions on quotas, the movement of capital, competition, intellectual property, and replicates the limited provisions for trade in services in the EU-Tunisia Agreements.

57.As an Association Agreement, it is broader in scope than a free trade agreement and incorporates cooperation commitments in areas such as agriculture, education, energy, and cultural matters. The Agreement also replicates the human rights provisions of the EU-Tunisia Agreement, envisaging the possibility of “appropriate measures”—including suspension of the Agreement—in the case of material breach by one of the Parties.

58.Once both the UK and Tunisia have received notification confirming that the other party’s domestic ratification procedures have been completed, the Agreement will come into force either on the day the EU Agreement ceases to apply to the UK (at the end of the implementation period under the Withdrawal Agreement or, when both Parties have confirmed that their domestic ratification procedures have been completed (whichever is the later). The Agreement does not allow for provisional application, which could lead to a break in continuity should the UK cease to be a party to EU Agreements before ratification processes can be completed in the UK or Tunisia. FCO officials have confirmed that this was requested by Tunisia as they are unable to provisionally apply a treaty.

59.Trade with Tunisia accounts for less than 0.1% of UK trade. In 2018 UK-Tunisia trade in goods was worth £250 million, with the UK enjoying a £4 million surplus. Main UK exports include goods falling under the ‘machinery and mechanical appliances’, ‘mineral fuels or oils’, and ‘electrical machinery and equipment’ categories of the Harmonised System. Main UK goods imports from the Tunisia were clothing articles and accessories, and goods in the ‘electrical machinery and equipment’ category. UK-Tunisia services trade was worth £128 million, with a UK surplus of £26 million.

60.The Agreement also introduces an extended cumulation of origin. This allows both parties to recognise content from the EU as originating in the UK or Tunisia in exports to one another. The Government notes that, without these provisions, products from the UK or Tunisia using EU content would no longer meet the origin requirements for preferential treatment by the other party. EU processing can, under certain conditions, also be recognised in UK exports to Tunisia and vice versa.

61.The Agreement also allows the UK and Tunisia to recognise products or materials from the EFTA states (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), Turkey and other parties to the PEM Convention23 as originating in the UK or Tunisia. The list of countries where ‘working and processing’ can count as ‘working and processing’ carried out in the UK or Tunisia is more limited. For the UK, aside from the EU and Tunisia, it includes Iceland, Norway, Morocco and Algeria. For Tunisia, only working or processing carried out in the UK, the EU, Morocco or Algeria can be recognised as originating in Tunisia. These wider cumulation provisions are subject to the existence of free trade agreements between the relevant parties.

62.While tariff levels in the UK Agreement will remain the same as in the precursor EU Agreement, tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have been resized to reflect trade flows between the UK and Tunisia. The UK Government based the resized TRQs on customs, trade flow and usage data. To maintain market access, both sides agreed to provide a minimum level of access by basing TRQs on a proxy measure where data showed historic trade as being very low or non-existent.

63.The UK-Tunisia Agreement, like its predecessor EU Agreement, does not include substantive commitments on the protection of geographical indicators (GIs). The Agreement builds on intellectual property commitments under TRIPS, unlike more recent EU trade agreements which include extensive GI provisions.

64.The institutional and governance provisions of the Agreement allow for significant amendments. Under Article 10 of the UK-Tunisia Agreement, the Parties may mutually agree to amend the text of the Agreement subject to “each Party’s internal legal procedures”. According to the parliamentary report, in the UK “amendments to the Agreement that are expressly subject to a formal exchange of notes to confirm completion of internal procedures would engage the process of Parliamentary scrutiny set out in the Constitutional Reform Act [CRAG Act] 2010”24. Again, to avoid a scrutiny gap, we recommend that the Government report regularly to Parliament on changes to international agreements.

65.The Association Council—the main governance body established under the Agreement–may also make modifications in specified technical areas. These amendments would be unlikely to engage the parliamentary scrutiny process under the CRAG Act. Our views on this issue are set out in paragraph 37 above.

66.In line with the majority of continuity trade agreements scrutinised by the Committee, it does not replicate the mechanism for bilateral parliamentary engagement existing in the EU-Tunisia Agreement; the Government has avoided re-establishing Parliamentary Committees in previous international agreements on the basis that it did not wish to bind the UK Parliament in the same way as the EU Parliament had been without prior consultation. The Agreement does provide for the continuation of a regular bilateral political dialogue, superseding the existing Tunisia-UK Bilateral Forum established in 2009, to “cover all issues of common interest”.

67.We welcome the fact that the Government has provided detailed information on the geographical extent of agreements, clarifying which elements would apply to Gibraltar and to the Crown Dependencies. We also welcome that the Minister confirms in the EM that “HMG shares stable agreement texts…on individual agreements”. However, while the EM confirms that the Government has shared the draft text of this specific Agreement with Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies, it does not make clear whether the text was also shared with the devolved administrations prior to signature. Our views on this issue are set out in paragraph 24 above.

68.Following an exchange with officials, we confirmed that the Agreement was shared when it was initialled. We welcome confirmation from officials that the Government will make clear in future EMs that stable texts have been shared with the devolved administrations.

69.We report the UK-Tunisia Association Agreement to the House for information.

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