To EU or not to EU?

With apologies to Shakespeare for a slightly tortuous title, I'm still working on a post about the current fascinating debate in Iceland about their future relations with the EU, specifically, is their current status as an EEA member sufficient or should they go the whole hog and join, and adopt the euro to avoid the yo-yo fluctuations of the krona. As I say I'm still working that up because there is a lot to it, but meantime paste below the speech I gave to the assembled parliamentarians yesterday. The debate has parallels for us in Scotland, lots of them.

(I'm trying to work out how to post a document to the blog, any tips appreciated)

Reading the speech, I'll clearly never make it into the Scottish Diplomatic Corps, but not a single one of them disagreed with me. Interesting times...

Speech to EEA JPC introducing report on functioning of EEA Agreement in 2007

Svartseni, Iceland 29 April 2008

Thank you Bilyana, Madame President, I’m delighted to introduce my report and pleased that so many of its themes have been ventilated by previous speakers in the earlier part of the meeting. I’m also indebted to the most effective functioning part of the EEA/EFTA Joint Parliamentary Committee, our fearsome secretariat and I would thank them for their work in producing it.

Given that it was circulated prior to the meeting, I’ll let it in its 33 pages stand as read, and only give a few personal highlights and observations.

Forgive me if this comes as across as a little less diplomatic than we might be used to, but I do think when we’re amongst friends I would be doing you a disservice if I did not give you my honest view of the functioning of the EEA Agreement and how I fear it will go.

The one line summary of the report is, as we’ve heard, that the EEA Agreement governing relations between the EU and Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein is functioning pretty well.

Fair enough, I agree, so long as you ignore the fact that it has degraded your parliaments and makes you bonded client states of the EU legislative machine. And so long as you ignore the fact that from an EU perspective the EEA looks increasingly odd, your position is increasingly weak and you risk falling off our radar altogether. In a very short term, I fear, genuinely fear, that the EEA Agreement which has been a pretty good comfort zone for you in recent years will become increasingly less comfortable and I’m not sure that is good for us or you.

We have heard frankly pretty rosy accounts of the “resolution” of last year’s points of dispute. The main dossiers of conflict were of course the Food Law and the role of the EU Food Standards Agency; the implementation of the EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading system; and the freedom of movement for family members. All of these dossiers were points of real significance for you, and, again, forgive me if this sounds rude, but as far as I can see the disputes were resolved by the EEA side doing as it was told and implementing the dossiers lock stock and barrel without any changes whatsoever and no achievement except delay.

I appreciate that you had difficulties with the provisions, that is your right, but at the end of the day the disputes were “resolved” by your three parliaments implementing the packages word for word. I’ll tell you frankly, I would not want to try to justify that to my voters in Scotland. We may have difficulties with some EU measures, but we were part of creating them.

But while we’re glad that those logjams were broken, as we look a little into the future, I can already see about five dossiers of greater significance than these, the Services Directive being just one, and I am frankly not sure the EEA Agreement will take much pressure.

I would refer you to paragraph 21 of the report, on page 5, where we say:

“The co-rapporteurs highlight that the EU is evolving both the scope of issues covered and its working methods”

That is putting it mildly! That is a diplomatic way of pointing out your very real risk of falling off our agenda altogether. The EU is now 27, varied, complex and competing states, and we’re only going to increase. I fear the EU will of necessity become even more self obsessed with making things work within our borders and you’ll find even less patience with the EEA, and you’ve not found much so far as things stand.

The Lisbon Treaty, regardless of the Irish referendum, is going to have a massive effect on the working of the EEA Agreement, because it will massively change the way the EU does business. I personally think it will put the EEA under considerable strain, because you risk the worst of all worlds: shut out of the decision making but obliged to implement the end product facing an EU less interested in excuses.

I’m telling you no secrets when I confess that I find it quite hard enough to keep track of what is going on without taking any of your interests or concerns into consideration.

And as a Scot, as a friend of your countries, I do not want to see that happen. There used to be those even in my party who would describe the “EEA as Scotland’s plan B”! As things progress it seems quite quite clear to me that the EEA is an utterly unattractive option.

As we digest the new procedures of to be implemented under the Lisbon Treaty, I think even the legal basis of the EEA and actions under it will become increasingly unclear, and I’m not sure there will be much appetite within the EU to do you favours because we’ll have our own problems. The long and the short of it I think the EEA, and EFTA, are increasingly less comfortable comfort zones.

And as one of the first symptoms of that, of course, the financial aspects of the Agreements are clearly going to change also. The contribution already made by your countries, worth hundreds of millions of euro, to our EU cohesion budgets is under active review. The Commission negotiation mandate should be signed off next month by the member states. It is of course a negotiation, but we are already hearing predictions of for example Iceland’s contribution increasing threefold.

Which brings me to the one Amendment today to the report, proposed by my MEP colleague Mrs Panayatopoulos, efharisto, to the effect that we need to have a clearly defined deadline to the conclusion of negotiations over the financial mechanisms and the deletion of the word “possible” before your contribution on the basis that it is quite clear you will be making a contribution of some magnitude. I’m frankly relaxed either way, I appreciate that in theory there is no obligation for your states to make a contribution, but it is hardly credible to suggest you will not be in reality. I’d agree though that we could have been clearer on the timescale, things need to be tied up by April 2009, so here we had left that as implicit the explicit amendment adds to the text so I’m happy with that.

But with that, the report is a pretty decent factual summary of how last year went, and I’m pleased to commend it to you and welcome your comments.

Our friends in the North, continued

I'm in Reykjavik again today, presenting my report on the "Functioning of the European Economic Area Agreement in 2007" to the Joint Parliamentary Committee which oversees the functioning of the agreement.

I'll attach the report to this somehow, it is pretty hefty but deserves reading. Any Scot who thinks the come independence we should "do an Iceland" and leave the EU especially should have a look at it. And bear in mind that as of last week 54% of Icelanders are in favour of joining the EU and 70% believethe government should start preparing for accession.

More on this later...

Something is rotten in the state of Whitehall...

I said I would not put press releases up on this blog but I think this one merits it, given yesterday's news from the English High Court that the UK Serious Fraud Office decision to drop the inquiry into alleged corruption in the BAE arms contract to Saudi Arabia was unlawful.

I have previous on this one, I contacted the Justice Commissioner back last year when the decision to drop it was announced, he declined to be involved sensing a hospital pass when he saw one, but this all stinks. Hats off to the campaigners who took this to the High Court in England and won, they have performed a service to democracy and transparency good on them.

The question, of course, is what happens now? We can assume zero political will to reopen this in London, so I think it is worth trying to ask the Commission to become involved again in the light of the new judgment from the High Court.

Bad craic. I do not know if there was bribery or corruption in the arms deals to Saudi, but I know Saudi well enough. The arms trade too, being something the UK government would sooner not talk about but kind of throws into sharp relief Labours talk about an ethical foreign policy.

This one will run and run.


Press Release for immediate use 11 April 2008

ATTENTION: NEWSDESKS

SMITH CALLS FOR EUROPEAN COMMISSION INVESTIGATION INTO UK SFO BAE INQUIRY

SNP Member of the European Parliament Mr Alyn Smith has today (Friday) written again to EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini urging him to become involved in the ongoing saga of the UK Serious Fraud Office and the inquiry into alleged corruption in the BAE Systems Saudi arms contracts. Mr Smith's call comes after he previously contacted the Commissioner after the SFO closed the investigation on the grounds that it was not in the public interest, but he has reiterated his call after the English High Court ruled this decision by the SFO unlawful. The Justice Commissioner at that time refused to become involved on the basis that it was a UK matter. Mr Smith was unhappy at that decision.

Speaking from Edinburgh Mr Smith said:

"I grew up in Saudi Arabia and know the place well, and know the Al Yamamah contract better than most. The UK's SFO, in my view, shamefully buckled to implicit blackmail and political pressure when the inquiry into alleged corruption was dropped, and I applaud those who secured yesterday's ruling that this decision was unlawful.

"I remember the days when the Labour government talked of an ethical foreign policy, but they soon enough forgot. If the UK does not, or is not seen to have clean hands then the UK's efforts are undermined across the Islamic world. I hope that the SFO will reopen this investigation, and in the event that corruption has taken place then those responsible should be brought blinking into the sunlight.

"However, I have little faith in the UK government, so have again contacted Commissioner Frattini urging him to become involved. The EU also has numerous high minded guides and declarations against corruption, I would hope he could be persuaded to show an interest this time round.

ENDS

Disaster!

Today the day I and most of my MEP colleagues have all been dreading for months. The European Commission has confirmed mobile phone calls will be permitted on aircraft.

Spending as much time on planes as I do, I'm actually quite glad of the rest from the thing going off, even if I do hate air travel. Mobiles only usually last about 6 months with me before they burn out, the damage to my brain presumably being a bit less noticeable.

The Commission consultation, coincidentally, was open for 6 months, and the response was pretty well universally in favour, with the luddites like myself minded to try and come up with a good reason but failing to find much beyond "they annoy me".

Still, who am I to stand in the way of progress. It does however, demonstrate just how pivotal the European Commission is over areas we seldom expect.

Planes cross borders, so it makes sense for the 27 different states of the EU to delegate such a technical decision to a common framework in which everyone has the same stake. Imagine if the Finns allowed mobile use on planes over, in or out of Finnish airspace, but Estonia did not. How would anyone regulate it? Imagine the confusion.

So, instead, the Commission appears all powerful, but only because the member states are happy for it to.

Power devolved is power retained after all.

The law of unintended consequences

Not much to do with high politics, but here's one that had me scratching my head today in the Agriculture Committee.

We were having a presentation about the risks to the food chain of (in summary) animals being fed to other animals, and the evidence (in summary) is that so long as the animals doing the eating are omnivores like pigs and chickens and so long as the animals they are eating are not other pigs and chickens it is (more or less) OK. So should the EU relax the rules on animal protein to non-ruminants? Discuss. I suspect we will continue to for some time, and the rules will not be relaxed yet. However, one example brought up by one of the Spanish members reminded me that sometimes we cannot do right for doing wrong.

Under the rules brought in EU-wide after BSE, any dead farm animals (fallen stock) need to be disposed of 'cleanly' ie not buried in groundwater, left to rot etc, because of the risk of possibly contaminated meat somehow entering into the food chain of other animals. A small risk, but one worth tidying up. So Scots farmers have to collect carcases and send to a vet for incineration, which is a cost but worth it. But have you thought of the poor Black Vultures of Southern Spain?

The Black Vultures of Southern Spain are apparently quite picky in their diet, and, previously, would make short work of dead lambs and sheep in the Spanish hills. They also provided a handy service to farmers, who used to just take fallen stock to the top of a handy hill and leave it there. No more, and the black vultures of Southern Spain have been found as far north as the Netherlands, apparently looking for food.

So it seems that the Black Vultures of Southern Spain have necessitated a derogation from the rules to the effect that meat certified fit for human consumption has been left on the top of hills for the birds to eat, apparently in pens which only the birds can access.

See how legislating for a Europe from the Algarve to the Arctic Circle, Stornoway to Cyprus throws up all sorts of issues you would never think of?