Unrevised Transcript of Evidence Taken Before
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Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before The Select Committee on the European Union External Affairs (Sub-Committee C) Inquiry on EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE Evidence Session No. 11 Heard in Public Questions 229 - 232 TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2013 2.00 pm Witnesses: Elmar Brok, Roberto Gualtieri, Arnaud Danjean, Véronique De Keyser, Tarja Cronberg, Sir Graham Watson, Charles Tannock and Sir Robert Atkins USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT 1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and webcast on www.parliamentlive.tv. 2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither Members nor witnesses have had the opportunity to correct the record. If in doubt as to the propriety of using the transcript, please contact the Clerk of the Committee. 3. Members and witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Clerk of the Committee within 7 days of receipt. 1 Members present Lord Teverson (Chairman) Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Lord Lamont of Lerwick Lord Radice ________________ Examination of Witnesses Elmar Brok MEP, Chairman, European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET), Roberto Gualtieri MEP, AFET, Arnaud Danjean MEP, Chairman of the SEDE Sub-Committee, AFET, Véronique De Keyser MEP, AFET, Tarja Cronberg MEP, AFET, Sir Graham Watson MEP, AFET, Charles Tannock MEP, AFET, and Sir Robert Atkins MEP, AFET, gave evidence. Elmar Brok: Thank you very much for coming to us. Most of you I have known for many years, I must say. I think I saw you first 30 years ago, so I hope we have an interesting debate. To tell you the truth, I am a little late because I came from a festivity. In another room of this Parliament, there was a meeting about the Élysée treaty and the German/French relationship. Today, we have the 50th anniversary, and this is such an historical event. It just started in Berlin. I was invited to that but I am here now. For the first time in Berlin, there was a full session of both Parliaments. The French and the German Parliaments met for a joint session in Berlin, in the Reichstag, which I believe is of European dimensions. It is very important that that was possible, if you have seen our history. I wrote an article about that, and read in the papers of Adenauer and De Gaulle at that time, and then we had the middle of the debate. The two guys said at that time, one week after De Gaulle stopped membership negotiations with Britain, that it is not possible to have someone in the Union who does not apply to all the rules of the Common Market and has special treatment. I thought, “What a modern debate to have in 1963”. It was more or less 2 from both sides the same arguments as there are today. Sometimes you read that in the old papers, but still we are not clear on all sides who was right at that time and who is right today. That is the reason why we have this discussion here. Lord Teverson, please start our debate. Here we have members from all the groups—from the EPP, from the Socialists, from the Liberals, Sir Robert Atkins, who is representing himself and his group. Please, you have the floor. Q229 The Chairman: President, thank you very much indeed for your welcome and thank you for participating in our inquiry in this particular fashion. Perhaps I could just explain that, in conducting our inquiry into the External Action Service, we will be using this meeting and the discussion and dialogue that we have this afternoon as part of our evidence when we write our report next month. We are not here to talk about the British situation in Europe or all the other topical issues that we sometimes talk about with our European colleagues; we are here very much looking at the External Action Service as an inquiry. We are particularly keen to have a report published, so that when the review takes place, probably starting in the spring through to summer, we are able to contribute positively to it. I understand you are writing your own report for the same reason. We are coming towards the end of this particular inquiry. We are meeting with our own Europe Minister, Mr Lidington, later this week to take a Foreign Office view, but we have been talking to academics, to member states and to international organisations to take evidence. We are trying to come up with conclusions that are useful for the way that the EEAS should move forward after its first years of operation. The European Parliament and you, as a foreign affairs Committee, will have probably far more day-to-day experience of the External Action Service than we do as a national parliament. We are very interested in your views about how the EEAS has succeeded so far, through building the Service while having a number of external challenges, and where you think it should go in the future, as well as 3 particularly your own relationship with the EEAS, the High Representative and any of your own thoughts around national parliaments and their role in terms of scrutiny and its work with the national parliaments. I have with me Lord Lamont, Lord Foulkes and Lord Radice. We are also a reflection of UK politics fairly well, in terms of two Labour Members, one Liberal Democrat and a Conservative—no UKIP, I am afraid, with us today. We do have two Members of UKIP in the House of Lords. There are no Cross-Benchers, who are an important independent part of the House of Lords. Otherwise, we are here. Elmar Brok: A pro-European delegation. Thank you very much. We also have Mr Danjean; he is our chairman of the Sub-Committee on Security and Defence, also he has a speciality an EU commissioner. Also the Greens are here and the Communists, so I think all the groups are represented here. Let me make a short remark about why the EEAS was set up. Mr Gualtieri and I are the reporters of the Parliament for the review process. This EEAS and the position of the High Representative and Vice-President of the Commission were set up in order to get synergy effects and save money in the long run. We had, in the past, a foreign relations commissioner with money and a staff. We had a High Representative, Mr Solana, with the right to negotiate but without staff and money. Every half a year, we had a new president of the Foreign Ministers Council. Now we have that put together in the hands of Lady Ashton, in order to get synergy effects and have political and economic synergy effects. This does not apply fully at the moment due to different reasons, but the structural reasons are that this cannot work fully because to build this up over two years—it has been only two years— and to form an office fully is very difficult. Also, we had to merge the Commission people who are out of the Commission and foreign service, so the Commission has fewer civil servants in that field. The old civil servants in foreign relations for the Commission were 4 part of the development. Council people moved there, so there are fewer in the Council in that field, and member state representatives, in order to increase the influence of the member states and to get their experience. That is the idea behind it. It has coherence for five years, also in the leadership of the Council. It is ridiculous that foreign policy and defence questions have, every half a year, someone else there. For a smaller country, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be invited to the Oval Office. But there was no strategy. This was the general idea; it was a constitutional convention and later I think an inter-governmental conference. The procedure for that—I was a member of the inter-governmental conference, both for the constitutional treaty and for the Lisbon treaty—was an especially long debate with the British Foreign Ministers in those meetings. The compromise we found is the compromise of 26 with Britain, when I read into the result that we have. This should be taken into consideration when we make a judgment. I am not able to make a final judgment about that, because it is too soon to judge it, but I see certain advantages now already. We have to continue them to have real synergy effects. The shortcomings, which are always there in such a situation, we have to find in the review process and we have to make changes. But there is one point where it is not fast enough in Brussels and where the political will of member countries is lacking. I will give you one example: Mali. In October, it was decided to set up a mission to train Mali’s army and police. Now, as the crisis exploded two weeks ago, we have found out that, despite it having been decided, member states were still considering how to do that. That is not so much a fault of you but of member states, including my own member state, which found out at the end of the day that two aeroplanes to transport non-French soldiers—indeed, a hypocrisy itself—were set up. We also have to see how far the political will goes and the commitment of member states to compositions, because in all these questions the interests of all our countries are 5 involved.