S.Atlantic : Cllrs Summers and Clausen Getting to Grips with Brussels Bureaucracy
Submitted by SARTMA.com (Nathan Prince) 13.12.2005 (Article Archived on 27.12.2005)

Dee Palmer of the BBC World Service asks Cllr. Summers about what's important in Brussels.

CLLRS SUMMERS AND CLAUSEN GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE BRUSSELS BUREAUCRACY

A Report for BBC World Service “Calling the Falklands” by Dee Palmer (DP) 09/12/05

A delegation from the Islands has been in Brussels this week.  They were attending a meeting of representatives from the Overseas Territories of the countries of the European Union.  The Falklands Team included Councillors Mike Summers (MS) and Andrea Clausen (AC).  Earlier today I went to see Mike at Falkland House and first asked him if the combination of himself, one of the most experienced Councillors and Andrea, new to Legco, was a deliberate decision.

MS:  It was a deliberate decision for me to go and Andrea to come along with Ginny Smith, who is responsible for European programmes and Sukey, who keeps in regular touch with European issues from here.  I have been dealing with European issues since 1989 and am therefore clearly the most experienced of the Councillors on European issues.  It was quite right that one of the newcomers came along to start to learn about how Europe works, what are the issues and what are the things that we discuss there.

DP:  How important is it to know exactly how things work in Brussels?

MS:  It’s essential.  It is a very large and complicated bureaucracy.  They have a huge amount of things to deal with.  The Overseas Territories for them are actually rather difficult to deal with and rather complicated. And, I think they find it one of their most difficult tasks sometimes so it is necessary to learn how they work and to learn the ways that we go around getting them to do things for us.

DP:  So, what were the principle subjects of discussion at this meeting like?

MS:  There were four – I guess – there was EDF-9 – the allocation from which the Overseas Territories get their financial contributions from the European Union for this current seven-year period.  The Falklands is owed €3Million from that and €2.4million from previous STABX programmes.  So there was discussion on our side and, indeed on everyone else’s side about how they are going to get their money from EDF-9.  EDF-9 has been in place now for three years and nobody has got anything out of it, although the allocations have long since been made.  So there are some pretty serious and hefty discussions about what on earth is going on in the Commission about this.

DP:  But this is something that all the other Overseas Territories – French, British, Danish, whatever, are giving a united front on.

MS:  Absolutely.  The Commissioner who attended for a relatively short period got a very hard time.  The Officials got a very hard time from everybody because everybody’s in the same boat.  They have signally failed to deliver on their commitments to provide assistance to the Overseas Territories from this fund.  They apologise profusely for it and offered any number of excuses.  And, the man, who is now ultimately responsible for dealing with it promised that he would have it all sorted by the end of March.  We are not holding our breath but it looks as though there might be some movement now, which is good for the budget because we have been anticipating this money for some while.

DP:  Another important area of discussion concerned the document, which sets out the relationship between the Overseas Territories and the EU.  But it needs to be amended or updated.  A third area – and one that’s very important to the Falklands was the rules, which govern the origin of products imported into the EU.

MS:  As most folks will know, we have quota free and duty free access of originating products from the Falklands into the European Union.  For us that means meat but principally fish.  And, the rules of origin in terms of fish are a little ancient.  They basically refer to vessels and catching vessels.  There has been a lot of discussion about whether that is appropriate.  The OTs don’t think it is.  The Commission is coming around to the way of thinking that it’s not.  We have to be looking at the original ownership of fish.  From our point of view that’s good because it means that the new property rights system that will be implemented next July in the Falklands might become the determining factor in the origin.  That will make life simpler.  It will mean we won’t have to have derogation and changes to the way things are currently done.  So that looks quite hopeful and it looks like we might be looking forward.  We will have to make some formal submissions on it relatively shortly but we should be able to push that forward in the next few months.

DP:  What was the other issue that had particular relevance to the Falklands?

MS:    The other issue is a philosophical issue that the European Union is working on.  They are very much in vogue now with something they call EPAs – Economic Partnership Agreements.  Basically it means they are trying to encourage all the Overseas Territories to get together with other territories in their regions and create regional trading blocks – regional trading arrangements. 

DP:  So that will be geographical regions?

MS:  Yes.  For the Caribbean it will be EPAs in the east and west Caribbean.  In the Pacific, there will be EPAs for different parts of the Pacific.  And, most of the territories have the opportunity to get involved in and take part in these economic partnership agreements, regional co-operation, regional integration – there are some of us who don’t.  Clearly the Falklands in the South Atlantic with the Argentine issues don’t have that opportunity.  St. Helena and the St. Helena Group don’t because they are so isolated – so remote.  There is St. Pierre and Miquelon that sits off the coast of Newfoundland and Greenland that sits by itself in the north.  There has been a lot of discussion between the four of us about whether we could form some kind of trans-Atlantic region, and then go to the Union for some other alternative instrument that benefits us and see if we can come up with something that is common to us all.  Otherwise, we will have to fight alone and it’s always better to fight with someone else than it is to fight alone.  We have a number of ideas, particularly assistance and transport and we are going to be pushing that over the next few months to see if we can make some progress on that.

(100X Transcription and Monitoring Service)