Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of 2015 of the European and External Relations Committee. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones are switched off, because they interfere with our electronic equipment, broadcast equipment. Two agenda items this morning. The first agenda item is looking at the EU strategy, and I have the great pleasure in welcoming back to Scotland. For the first time to this committee, Jacqueline Miner, who is the head of the European Commission's representation in the United Kingdom, will be giving us evidence this morning on the European Commission work programme. Welcome to committee Jacqueline, and I believe that you have a short opening statement. Yes, thank you, chair. Thank you very much for this invitation. It is a great pleasure to be able to meet the committee formally. I know that you are in constant touch with our office here in Scotland, and I just like to take the opportunity to reiterate that they stand ready to assist you in any way they can with information. What I had planned to do was to speak briefly to perhaps some changes in the way that the commission, in its new formation, following the appointment of President Juncker and his team of commissioners, how it intends to go about business in the next five years, and then briefly refer to a number of the key initiatives, rather than running through the entire work programme, because I have had the advantage of seeing the detailed notes provided by your secretariat and the responses to them. Obviously, you are quite familiar with the content of the work programme. If you cast your minds back to May 2014, the European Parliament election slogan was, this time it's different. I think the question that still probably lingers in people's minds is, is it really different, and if so, how? I think in many ways it has been different. The appointment of President Juncker did emerge as a result of the European elections. He was the candidate put forward by the largest, the political group that emerged as the largest in the European Parliament, and that argument eventually carried the day in the Council of Ministers. Then, when you look at his fellow commissioners, the other men and women appointed to serve in his college, you see that there are five former prime ministers, four deputy prime ministers, and 19 former ministers. I think that's a mark of the importance that member states now accord to their representatives or to the persons that they appoint to the European Commission. The average age is 49, which is younger than many governments. In particular, if you look at the vice presidents, and I'll come back to the vice presidents, their average age is 43, which is quite significant change from previous commissions. President Juncker has made it clear that he intends his commission to be more political, more top-down and more focused. He has talked about being big on the big things, smaller and more modest on the smaller things. That was in his own personal political manifesto that he presented to the European Parliament before they endorsed his appointment. It is a red thread that runs through all of the decisions that have been taken so far about the commission's working methods and which underpins the work programme for 2015. What does he mean by more political, more top-down, more focused? I think that it means that they will really address the key challenge for Europe, which is jobs, competitiveness and growth. That is reflected in the 10 priorities which President Juncker put to the European Parliament. I think that it also means, and this again I think you can see reflected in the work programme for 2015, that the commission has understood the message which certainly some national politicians have communicated to it and which probably is implicit in the outcome of the European elections, that the European Union has become too intrusive in terms of the rules and regulations it makes and their impact on the daily lives of citizens. I think that there is a determination to address that concern. How has that been done in the structure of the commission? There are six vice presidents and the high representative. The high representative is, by reason of her office, necessarily a vice president. These vice presidents, contrary to previous practice, have a real delegation of powers. In former commissions, the title of vice president was mainly onerific, it was based on seniority and the main responsibility attaching to being a vice president was to deputise for the president of the commission should he be absent from meetings. Here what we have seen is real power given to vice presidents to co-ordinate their areas of responsibility and to lead project teams on key legislative and other initiatives. You can see that the choice of vice presidents was dictated by prior political office. All of those originally nominated were former prime ministers. One of those originally nominated did not survive the hearings in the European Parliament. Commissioner Chevchevic, who is now serving for his second time, was appointed to replace her. It is also worthy of note that, when they were appointed, the words for now were attached to the announcement of their appointment, which carries with it the possibility that at some time in this commission there will be a reshuffle, which has never been the practice of commissions so far. So there is an interesting prospect that at some time it may be that portfolios have changed, that the overall distribution of files is reshaped. I think one effect of having created those vice presidents is that there are now really substantial portfolios for the other commissioners, the so-called team commissioners, with 28 members of the commission, 26 once you take out the president and the high representative. It becomes quite difficult, I think, to ensure that each of them has a really substantial and serious job. By having created vice presidents and team commissioners, I think that has been one of the beneficial side effects. The project teams are variable, so there is no permanent reporting lines between team commissioners and vice presidents. It will depend upon the initiative. Everybody can be drawn into the realm of a particular vice president for a particular initiative. I would also like to emphasise the role of the first vice president, Franz Timmermans, who was formerly the Dutch Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, who has been given a very special responsibility for better regulation, for agenda planning and for relationships with national parliaments and the European Parliament. I think he will be a key interlocutor for the United Kingdom. He was very much aligned with the views across the political spectrum here in the United Kingdom as to the need for change within the European Union before he was appointed to the commission. His role will be to make sure that nothing gets on to the commission agenda, which has not been thoroughly impact assessed, which has not been tested for its impact in terms of regulatory burden and administrative cost. There have been some changes already in the way that the commission goes about its assessment of impacts prior to tabling proposals. You can see his influence in the shape of the work programme. There are 23 items on the work programme compared with an average of 129 items over each of the years of the Baroso Commission. I think that he is very much part of the commission's thinking on discontinuity, the decision to withdraw a number of proposals up to 80 proposals, and the determination to continue to pursue the refit process, which is the better regulation programme. The other thing I would say, perhaps, is that when one looks at the allocation of portfolios, I think that surprised a number of commentators in that often the prior tradition had been that countries with an obvious and particular interest in certain policy areas, their representatives, their member of the commission was not given that portfolio, but we have seen with the appointment of Jonathan Hill that the United Kingdom commissioner has been given responsibility for financial stability and financial markets. The programme may I just pick out one or two things, which I think are significant, but obviously I stand ready to answer questions on anything. In terms of jobs and growth, the most important thing is something that has already been tabled, namely the investment package, the idea of using commission funds in a more smart fashion than has previously been the case, whereas a lot of commission funding to date has taken the form of grants co-financing of projects. The idea of the investment package is to make use of that funding to create a guarantee fund that would leverage and crowd in private sector investment for key infrastructure and research projects. The plan is to deliver over 300 billion euros of growth-heavy, intensive projects. Other things that will be clearly of interest to the United Kingdom and which is certainly going to appear in the early months of this year, the digital single market, the UK businesses have a key role in the online internal market. They have an inbuilt advantage by way of language because most of the internet speaks English. It is very much in the interest of the British economy that the digital single market should become a greater reality than it presently is. That package I think we can expect to see reforms to copyright, to align copyright rules with consumer expectations. It is quite surprising I think to many consumers that when they travel abroad they are not able to make use of the internet in the same way. Famously for Brits, iPlayer does not work once you leave these shores. The correlative of that is I think as well, aside from copyright, that you need a consumer protection regime that works in the digital environment. The consumer protection rules, which offer consumers guarantees when they are buying cross-border at the moment, are really conceived in terms of tangible goods. We need to think about how they would work for intangible services, software, music downloads and so on. There are some infrastructure questions there. We will very shortly be seeing the energy package. I think within the next few weeks you will see the energy union package tabled. It will consist of a number of things. A document on the energy union as such with a focus on energy security, how are we going to ensure that the European Union retains its autonomy or at least secures as far as possible its autonomy in energy. It will also relate to the completion of the internal market, decarbonisation, better energy efficiency and investment in research and development of alternative energy sources. The single market, the work will press on with the single market. That won't necessarily be legislative. There may be some selective legislative proposals I think in relation to business services, again an area in which the UK has significant interest given our service-based economy. Capital markets union, the project which Lord Hill will be very prominent in. How can we now, having had five years of restructuring, re-regulating the financial markets, ensure that they work to support the real economy? How can we connect the capital which everyone says is available within the European Union with the businesses who need it to grow and to scale up? I think that we will be seeing a consultation document again around Easter. Perhaps on trade, again a British priority, there will be a big push to conclude the discussions and the negotiations on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. You will have seen that last week in a bid to encourage transparency the commission released all its negotiating objectives. It released documents encapsulating its negotiating objectives and also some of the draft texts which it has submitted to the American side. Later last week it also released the results of the consultation on investor-state dispute settlement which has become a very contentious issue in the context of TTIP. That's really just a few highlights but as I say I'm happy insofar as I can to reply to questions on the work programme or any more general questions that you might have on commission policy and working methods. Thank you. Thank you very much. A very detailed opening statement for us in many areas that this committee has been taking. A very keen interest in TTIP being one of those. A quick opening question that I have for you is about the political make-up of the current European Parliament and what kind of influence you may be foreseeing and maybe any measures that the commission is looking at to ensure that that political influence is in a positive way and enhances the commission's work programme rather than hold it back. Thank you. The composition of the Parliament of course changed as a result of the elections and what you have are a number of parties, political groupings, variously described perhaps the most neutral ways edge parties, parties who are not or have not so far been of the mainstream. I think it's a little early to speculate what impact that will have in practice on the way in which the Parliament works. There are two schools of thought. One is that it will make the work of the Parliament more difficult because there will be less party discipline. In the previous Parliament, the outgoing Parliament, it was normally possible to assemble a majority for a legislative measure by accumulating the support of one of the two largest political groups, either the EPP or the socialist group and the swing group in the middle, the European Liberals. It's not so clear that that will be a way forward in the new Parliament and certainly the first signs are that it will be difficult to assemble majorities because on the vote on the work programme last week, it wasn't possible for the Parliament to pass a resolution. There were two conflicting blocking minorities. On the other hand, I think when it comes to the detail of co-decision legislative work, the experience of the Parliament has always been that it is a body that moves forward largely by consensus, so the detailed working committee often results in an overwhelming vote of the committee or compromise amendments where different groups can come together. That may not always be optimal in terms of legislative clarity or drafting, but it does result in progress in terms of the legislative procedure. The other thing which the commission is proposing is the conclusion of an inter-institutional agreement with both the council and the Parliament whereby there would be more forward planning of the legislative agenda, so that at an early stage both the member states in council and the European Parliament represented by its bureau would agree with the commission what the legislative priorities were and would make parliamentary time and resources available to ensure their rapid progress through the legislative procedure. The whole political make-up situation in the European Parliament will be watched with some interest across all member states, but quite possibly a bit more in the UK and Scotland too. On that, how big an impediment would be a campaign for an in-and-out referendum on the UK's position in the European Union? It is a very political question, but in the backdrop of a more, I will be diplomatic, diversified political make-up of the European Parliament, what then additional impact would a campaign for a referendum have on the programme? Let me say as a preliminary mark, the commission is entirely neutral in terms of whether a referendum is desirable or not, that is a matter for the British government, the British people, and of course the commission would respect the democratic expression of their views. It is a well-honed phrase. In practical terms, first of all, we have to know what are the reforms that a British government would seek before returning to put the question to the electorate in the form of a referendum. There have been various statements made in various ways by the Prime Minister acting as leader of the Conservative Party, but we haven't yet, for understandable reasons, seen a detailed negotiating agenda. The next question is having seen that, how much of those reforms are either already underway, and I have referred to a number of things which I think have appeared in some of the references to reform, so completing the single market, the digital single market, progressing with energy union, external trade policy, those are already underway, some of them require legislation, some of them don't. If evidence of legislative progress is required, then that links back to your earlier question as to how effective and how efficient the institutions will be in their new composition. The big question, of course, will be whether the British government will be seeking treaty change, and treaty change is not an easy thing to achieve at European level. It requires a constitutional convention, which normally takes some time. The Lisbon Treaty does provide for simplified procedures for minor changes to the treaty, but significant change would then have to be ratified by all the Member States according to their normal parliamentary procedures, and in some Member States by referendums. The situation is obviously not one that is easy to achieve in the short term. Partly it is the European Parliament, partly it would be other national parliaments who would have a say. I will let that one hang and I will go to my colleague Jamie McGregor. My first question is to do with the priorities outlined by John Claude Yonker. He makes a statement that if Europe invests more, Europe will be more prosperous. Then he talks about the investment plan that we are putting forward today is an ambitious new way of boosting investment without creating new debt. How can you invest more without increasing debt? That is my first question. The second question is how will this overarching policy, particularly on broadband, impact on Scotland? I represent the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and I have to tell you that the broadband that we have there in various areas is practically non-existent. I believe that, for example, Slovenia has far better connectivity. How can we in the Highlands and Islands gain something from this overarching policy on broadband? That is my first question. I have got another question after that, if that is all right. Thank you. Investing more without increasing debt, I think that President Yonker was referring obviously to public debt there to the need for fiscal consolidation. The investment package is deposited on a better use of available funds. The Commission typically has used those parts of the European budget at its disposal previously to co-finance by way of grant. What it is planning to do with the European fund for strategic investment is to make use of the funding at its disposal and some of the funds that are available to the European Investment Bank to fund a guarantee. The guarantee would then leverage in private sector investment to projects that would otherwise not have found investment from the private sector. The idea is that there is a guarantee fund of 8 million invested from European funds that leverages up to 16 million of guarantee on a double basis. You deposit 8 million, but it becomes 16 million guarantee and the remaining 8 million, sorry my maths are not my strong point, 7 million from the investment bank. There is a 23 million guarantee fund that on the basis of prior experience of the European Investment Bank will enable them to secure private sector investment of about €315 billion. That will then be invested in eligible projects which could be infrastructure projects, transport, broadband, energy, which would otherwise not, if it had not been for this guarantee and if it had not been for the investment fund taking the risk of first loss, would not have secured investment from the private sector. Decisions on which projects to fund will be taken not by the commission, not by bureaucrats, but by investment experts and it will mobilise the expertise that the European Investment Bank already has in this kind of investment procedure. That is a new fund, but it does not have an impact on existing EIB funding, which is already available for large infrastructure projects and will not have a direct impact on, for example, regional funding or on the Connect in Europe facility overall. So, there will be a number of ways in which the Highlands and Islands will be able to access funds to invest in upgrading broadband. My second question is based around the sort of obvious difficulties, immediate difficulties facing the EU generally. Two of them must be the oncoming Greek elections and the possible result. The second is the very high dependence on Russian energy, Russian gas, with present relationships, especially if you look at the sort of Russian expansion into Ukraine and difficulties there, you are facing a situation where the tap could be turned off. Now, so my question I suppose is does the commission have a kind of cobra committee that discusses these issues which are very relevant and very topical? When do they discuss it? Are the discussions made public? And what is plan B in terms of both of these issues which I have raised? Thank you. So, on the Greek elections I think we must see what happens. I think it is looking likely that Tsaritsa may win. They may under Greek parliamentary law, they will almost certainly have to go into coalition with smaller parties. And interestingly, the smaller parties, Pasok and Potemi, both have made it a condition of any entry into coalition with Tsaritsa that Greece remains a member of the Europe and a member of the European Union. And again, I think it's not unlike the question that your chairman posed until that government is in power and has made clear what its intentions are. It's difficult for the commission, the European Central Bank or indeed the IMF to respond to its demands. The commission stands ready to discuss with the incoming Greek government the ways in which it can satisfactorily complete its programme and the ways in which it might need further assistance and the terms on which that assistance would be provided by the Troika. The commission obviously is keeping a very close eye on what happens in Greece, but I don't think it has anything quite akin to the Cobra Committee which is preparing its response in advance of the outcome of those elections. There are regular meetings between commission officials and Greek officials that review the programme continues, the reforms in the Greek administration are still underway in terms of reducing the size of the public sector structure of reforming Greece. So I think this year Greece is on course for the first time to produce a structural surplus. It was projected to have a significant structural surplus in 2015, that may change with an incoming government. But some of the signs were actually rather positive at the point when the election was called, so we will have to see what happens. On relations with Russia and energy security, Vice President Cevchevic was in Moscow last week talking to the Russian authorities. The commission monitors very carefully the winter package that was put in place to assure the Ukraine of continued gas supplies during the season. Overall that has worked fairly well. The tap has not been turned off, supplies have been maintained, there has not been a lot of tension developed around that package. The question is whether a summer package has to be put in place with some funding by which the European Union guarantees that Ukraine will meet the backlog that has built up in payments for energy to Russia. Or whether arrangements between the two countries revert to normal contractual arrangements. That's still an open question I think and is being discussed in a tripartite way. The longer time issue of energy security, I think there is no silver bullet. It will be a painstaking work to ensure that interconnectors are built to enable gas and electricity indeed from other sources to reach those parts of the European Union which are really heavily dependent at present on gas and oil coming from Russia, the Russian Federation. So one key issue I think for the energy package which is forthcoming will be to look at a southern pipeline now that southern stream is no longer on the agenda to create a pipeline that will bring in gas and oil from the Middle East to the south and southeastern European countries. The other measures I think are also interconnecting those countries which have lots of renewable energy and that can be the south, it can be the north depending upon which renewable source you're talking about, building the interconnectors which enable that energy in the form of electricity to reach those countries which currently heavily dependent on gas and coal fired electricity generation. And also I think promoting energy efficiency. Commissioner Ceftievic was in London on Monday and it's clear that he's very enthusiastic about better ways of heating for example, community heating projects which work very well in Scandinavian countries and in some of the Baltic states. If they could be used and extended, experience of that could be extended to other member states that might reduce reliance upon expensive and vulnerable energy sources. I don't suppose Greece is that worried about the heating side. Thank you very much. Hans-Alo, I've got a quick supplementary and then Rod Campbell. Yes, thank you very much and thank you for being here today. It was just a supplementary on the energy crisis that we face in Europe and isn't the fact that we're looking at Algeria to plug the gap for gas if push comes to shove? Certainly, I mean we're also looking across the Mediterranean at ways in which both gas but also solar generated power could be brought across the Mediterranean. I think the big issue facing the European Union is its dependence on single sources of energy. Diversification will make us more secure and there are two ways of diversifying, either diversifying from internal sources, improving the generation from renewables within the member states. Certainly, the energy mix can also, in some countries, include nuclear, it can include shale, that's one pillar, and also making sure that having generated internally, we then have ways of sharing it optimally because some countries currently have a surplus, others are very dependent upon imports. We don't have the interconnectors which enable the surplus to be directed to those which would need it and could make good use of it. The other thing is to diversify our external sources of energy, which means, I think, looking to North Africa, also looking at, for example, liquefied gas, which can be brought a much greater distance from the Middle East. That means probably building the ports in Spain and then, again, building the interconnectors on through the Iberian Peninsula, which will take it up to France and to the heartland. The reason I was asking the question was, opposing the question, is this sole dependence on the USSR and to try and reduce that threat that's been looked at. I just wanted to give ourselves a bit of breathing space to say, well, there are alternatives and we are exploring them. That was very helpful. Thank you very much. I've got two, hopefully, very short questions and one a wee bit longer if that's okay with you. Just morning, in relation to Priority 5, a deeper and fairer economic and monetary union, there's a reference to reinforce rules against money laundering. I couldn't see, I appreciate that this work programme is actually for only one year, that seemed to be much happening possibly in relation to the fourth, I think, money laundering directive. Are you able to give me an update on progress in relation to that? I will be frank, I'm not, but I will find the answer out for you and provide you with it in writing. Moving on to the second brief question. The area of justice and fundamental rights point, there is a reference to respect for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the fact that the commission is committed to equality of opportunity for people with disabilities. What's that actually going to mean in practice in the work programme? So, there is the proposal for disabled access, but I think it's also very much a mainstreaming commitment so that in everything that is done we look at the ways in which legislation, the regulatory framework, can ensure that disabled persons can enjoy the same benefits and that, for example, technical standards are developed in a way which enables disabled persons to make use of products and to ensure that products are safe for their use. We also, I think, will see more work done on access to the workplace, physical access but also opportunity access and non-discrimination in terms of employment rights. I think that there will be a realm of raft of issues coming forward. Traditionally the commission and the European Union has looked at discrimination, well it began by looking at discrimination on grounds of nationality that then extended to a lot of work on grounds of gender discrimination and now I think it's going to deploy the expertise to look at discrimination on grounds of disability but also to promote new technologies. A lot of work will be done, I think, in Horizon 2020 to look at ways of providing assisted living so that disabled persons can live independently in the community. Thank you for that. My final question is in relation to the issue of labour mobility. It's my understanding that the present UK government has concerns about free movement of labour. This particular part in relation to the internal market with a strengthened industrial base makes reference to the fact that it's important to support labour mobility, especially in cases of persistent vacancies and skill mismatches, including across borders, while supporting the role of national authorities in fighting abuse. The commission has always said that the free movement of persons is one of the four pillars of the single market, alongside free movement of goods, freedom to provide services and the free movement of capital. It's evident that the Prime Minister acknowledged this. In a speech yesterday that some member states are confronted by very serious skills shortages and the economic theory underpinning free movement of persons was always that those skills shortages could be met by people with the necessary qualifications moving from one member state to another. I think that's reflected in the work programme. President Junger, I think, has on a number of occasions made clear that from the commission's perspective free movement of persons is a fundamental right and a fundamental value to which much importance is attached by European citizens. Having said that, the commission recognises that any abuse should be confronted and pursued with vigor by the member states and I think we are going to be looking at the legislation to ensure that the provisions enable the member states to tackle abuse and also to perhaps put in place measures by way of information sharing, comparing best practice that enable abuse to be tackled more efficiently and effectively. Now, I think there is a separate issue as to changes that the United Kingdom Government might want to see in the substantive provisions governing the coordination of social security systems, which the commission would not necessarily characterise as addressing abuse. I think that they are parallel work streams and I go back to my previous answer, which is that I think that the commission needs to see detailed proposals from the British Government before it can give a detailed response. Willie Coffey. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you. I wonder if I might try two questions, convener, if that's possible. One on the digital single market and the second one on a more general question about how Europe aims to reconnect or connect with its citizens. On the digital single market, Mr Eunker tells us that if we create this digital single market, we can generate 250 billion euros worth of additional growth, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and that's certainly been big on the big things, as you said in your opening remarks. We also know that the infrastructure budget for things like broadband, which was mentioned by Jamie Macgregor, was slashed from about £9 billion to £1 billion. The question I have is how can we have one if we don't have the other? It's a bit like having service stations all over Europe but poor roads linking them, in a sense, to try and introduce an analogy. How can you have that kind of level of investment in the digital single market if we take where I off the ball on the whole infrastructure that delivers and arrives at it? You're right in that some of the money to create the guarantee fund, which I referred to earlier in the context of FC, was taken from the connecting Europe budget. But I don't think that that necessarily means, and it's certainly not the commission's intention, that there should be less funding available for infrastructure, more digital infrastructure, essentially broadband. The commission's view is that it would be a better use of that money and based on its observation of the market would be a better use of that money to use it to bring in private investment for digital infrastructure than simply to fund it directly by way of grants. You get, to quote the vernacular, more bang for your buck if you use it by way of guarantee than you do if you use it by way of direct financing. There is also, of course, still funding left within the structural funds, which can in certain circumstances be used for infrastructure, including local broadband. But I think the view of the commission is that digital is an area which does attract private investment. There may be some infrastructure, which, because of its nature, because it's on the periphery, it's serving rural communities, is not as commercially attractive to private investors. That's cabling a big city would be. But with a little assistance, particularly this first loss assistance, where the commission would, what the European Union's guarantee fund would take the first loss, that will be enough to bring in the private investors. The risk of that, of course, is that the promoter communities, not just in Scotland but across Europe, are always last to get services if it's left to the market because the rate of return isn't there. We see that in Scotland and we probably see it elsewhere. From what you said there, do you think there's a counterbalance to that that will try to ensure that that kind of digital exclusion doesn't get worse? What FC is trying to do is to improve the return on investment in a way, to return or to adjust the risk analysis that an investor would do before committing funds. The downside risk for the investor is reduced because they are certain that any loss will be incurred first and foremost by the guarantee fund and not by the private funds. We think that people who are cleverer than I think that that will be enough to push the market in the right direction. As I said, it's one strand but there are still other strands of more traditional funding that remain. Do you want me to answer the other question? It's about connecting with the ordinary citizens of Europe and how you plan to do that. If you look at the European Parliament's website and indeed the commission's website, the public-facing website, they're not exactly aimed at the ordinary citizen in my view. They're designed by officials and aimed at academics. We have said at this committee on a number of occasions that Europe needs to think about how it talks to and engages its citizens more appropriately. Do you see a need to do something like that so that we can counter quite a lot the negative anti-European coverage that you get in the media, particularly in the UK, where it's almost exclusively negative? Do you not see an opportunity in the way that you yourself communicate with the public to make that easier and more accessible for ordinary members of the public to access the work that you do? I think certainly the commission could do better in terms of communicating. We're not state of the art by any means but I think there are a number of considerations. Certainly we can do better in terms of making the information more easily accessible, more intuitively accessible to anyone who visits our websites. I think there is an awful lot of information on the website. The problem is often finding the page which gives you the detail you want. It's frustrating, I think, not only to specialists, to business associations, non-governmental associations, national politicians. It can also be quite frustrating to commission officials to find a page on the commission's Europa site that you want to direct people to. But work is under way to improve that. More generally, in terms of communicating, I think we have to be realistic. There are 30 people also in London, four or five people here in Edinburgh. We have to think how we can have the most impact making use of those resources in terms of conveying information and improving understanding and knowledge of the British public. I think quite often the way we can best do it is through intermediaries, partly because the commission is not a trusted voice in British political discourse. I think that's something that we have to take as a given at least for some time. Partly because other voices are more familiar to the British public. If it is a British or a Scottish business association, a British or a Scottish non-governmental organisation who is saying something about Europe, they can talk in terms that the public will better understand. They know the context. They know their audience. And they will, I think, be more likely to be believed. We cannot change the media. We would not want to change the media. They're perfectly entitled to take their different editorial lines. We do quite actively seek to provide them with information to correct any inaccuracies and to rebut what we think is unfair comment, but that keeps my four press officers very busy. More generally, I think two things. One is the commission needs to take measures to restore trust. One of the things that is in the work program that it is doing is being more transparent. So all commissioners, their chiefs of staff, directors general who are the most senior permanent officials will open their diaries completely. You can see all of the meetings that they have, when and with whom, how long that lasted. And they have now committed also only to meet organisations that are registered in the transparency register. So a member of the public can see who the organisation is. They can work out from its name, maybe what its main interests are, but they can also go to the transparency register and see what it has declared there. But my final point would be, Europe stands a fall on its record of competence. And I think it has to be able to demonstrate to the citizen that it is doing the things which are of most concern to the citizen, namely securing employment now and in the future, ensuring that European economies return to prosperity, looking at the big challenges which confront us environmentally in terms of energy, in terms of an ageing population and protecting those rights that Europeans have always felt to be crucial and critical, tolerance, respect of minorities and very relevantly at the moment, freedom of expression and association. Really quickly. I accept all of that and I agree with all of it. But there are 500 million citizens in Europe that are not getting that message and they are certainly not getting it through your website or the European Parliament's website. They are boring, frankly. The European Parliament website, the main feature on it today is, are your sausages made with horse meat? And your website has just got documents full all over it. If that's the way to engage with the public, I think we need to step up a wee bit here and engage more directly with the kind of messages that you want to give people. Well, we do engage through social media as well and we have actually in London just started a big project, completely revamp our website, but that's a promise so I hope next time I come back it will be less boring. I'll try. Thank you very much. Okay, Ann McTire. Thank you, convener, and good morning, Ms Minor. Two quick questions, and the first one is, which areas of the work plan are of particular interest to Scotland? For Scotland, I think obviously the energy union given the nature of the Scottish economy, capital markets union because of the strong financial services presence here in Edinburgh. I think as well the jobs guarantee, the youth guarantee, because although that works through national legislation, it's obviously of great importance to young people who are coming out of education maybe without immediate prospect of finding a job. And I think digital, because as various of your colleagues have said, digital is a way which enables regions which are not at the heart of Europe to have access to the entire 500 million consumers in the European Union. It also enables very small, even micro businesses, to have a shop window to the entire world, but at least to those 500 consumers. So it's a way of enabling smaller companies to move into exporting their goods and services very quickly. Thank you, and my second quick question is about taking some of those work programmes that you've mentioned. How do you envisage them helping to deliver the goals of the Europe 2020? One of the work programme items is looking, revising the Europe 2020 goals. There was always planned to be a mid-term review of the Europe 2020 goals. I don't think there's going to be a fundamental change in the long-term objectives. We're still headed in the same direction, more in sustainable, smart and inclusive growth. What I think this commission may do is perhaps reduce the number of indicators. It may also try and correlate its work programme with the Europe 2020 goals. It will try and fit in the things that it has decided to do, which are posited very much, as I said at the beginning, on President Juncker's personal manifesto. It will adjust those to the Europe 2020 template. It's almost steady as she goes in terms of Europe 2020, although we know we're not in the place we would like to be at this halfway point. All that we can do is continue to strive to get closer to those goals. I'm concerned about that last answer. I thought that the commission should be driving towards the 2020 vision, which envisages things like full employment and the work programme ought to be engineered to deliver that. That seems to me to be the logical way to go about it. The other aspect that I wanted to query with you was how joined up is the work programme. Clearly, improving energy security and creating jobs and growth are eminently linkable, and the investment programme that you've laid out, or the £315 billion that makes a big sum of money, could be focused on, for example, some European strategic-wide energy initiatives that would create jobs. Is that part of the big picture, or is that part of what we're aiming to do over the next few years? In relation to your initial remarks, I must apologise because I perhaps wasn't as clear as I would have been in replying to the previous question. The priorities of this commission are very similar to the priorities in Europe 2020. It's just that they're formulated according to a different template, but the whole thrust of the work programme is to concentrate on things which will drive job creation, growth and competitiveness. I think that there is no difference between the two sets of objectives. In terms of being joined up, I go back again to the structure of the commission. It's very much intended to be a more joined up commission so that the whole of the policy agenda is driven by the college and is top down. It's the members of the college, the commissioners themselves, who decided the direction of policy and that this isn't being driven by the services. I would not, of course, say this, but there are some people who say that officials have their own agendas and tend to drive forward proposals that they've been working on for a long time. I'm sure that never happened in the commission, but it certainly won't be happening in the future. Also, the way of working these interlocking project teams, the aim is to ensure that there's a read across from each of these big initiatives to the others. For example, in the energy package, there will also be a list of the key infrastructure proposals that are planned to be funded by the regional fund, the Connecting Europe facility. That is parallel to infrastructure projects that might be eligible for FC funding. In terms of the projects that will be funded by FC, there is already a list of pipeline projects that group together under energy, digital infrastructure, research and development, transport infrastructure. Not all of them, that list is not a guarantee of funding through the European Fund for Strategic Investment. It's also not being on the list doesn't mean you won't get funding, but it's indicative of the kinds of projects that FC is intended to drive financing towards. In short, joining up policies is going to be definitely one of the things that the commission wants to improve. The way it has been set up is conducive to doing that. The other aspect of joining up various initiatives is in terms of delivering a strategic direction for, let's say for energy security, for example. Scotland is obviously very important to Europe given the North Sea, given the renewable resources that we have here. I would expect that Europe would be looking to invest money in Scotland in terms of carbon capture and storage, for example. We've got all the infrastructure that we need for a demonstration project, for example in the North Sea with the oil fields. It could be in terms of investment in wave and tidal power. The feedback that we've been getting is that the Scottish Government is being limited in what it can do because of European state aid rules in investment in these new technologies. Can we expect a different approach over the next few years in terms of the development of renewable technologies and the ability of the Scottish Government, the UK Government and others to invest in the technology of the future that will deliver us clean energy? The energy union, which I think is likely to be tabled in the next month or so, one of the five dimensions of the communication will certainly be research and development. It will be looking at ways in which we can encourage greater investment in research in clean technologies, sustainably technologies. I think that it's premature to speculate as to whether that would look at the existing state aid rules or not. I know again from having accompanied the commissioner during discussions in London earlier in the week that he's very enthusiastic about carbon capture and storage. He feels very strongly that in the run-up to Paris, for example, Europe has to show leadership in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One of the ways that it can do that is by demonstrating that clean technologies and green technologies are an area that is really helpful for growth and future competitiveness. The message has been heard in Brussels. You will obviously want to examine how that translates into the policy documents on energy union and make your views clear. In terms of being able to deliver something like that, what I was talking about, does it require, is there a bit of pork barrel politics involved in delivering that, that every member state has to get a piece of action, or is there a recognition of the strategic importance of this for the whole of Europe? An individual member state doesn't need to push the boat out on this. This will gather support more widely. I think there is that recognition, yes, that these projects have to be of common European interests. They have to have a European dimension, and that means that there is not an allocation by member state. One of the concerns about the ways in which the fund is being set up and administered is to try and ensure that the focus is on the viability of the project and the interest of the project, and not the overall split of the funds. As you can see, there are many aspects of the work programme that hold the interests of individual committee members as well as the overall committee. I know that some other members want to do quick supplementaries, but we have another agenda item to get through. If they want out of here for half-eleven, I have to be quite strict on that, but would you mind that if members have other questions that we feed them through our clerking team, we could send them on to you and maybe seek some written responses to those? I'm very happy to do that. I haven't forgotten the question on money laundering, so I'll make sure I find out about that. He won't allow you to forget it, either. I say thank you very much. It was a real pleasure to have you at committee today, and we hope that this is the first of many times that you can come and share your wealth of experience and understanding of what all means as far as the UK and especially Scotland go. Thank you very much to your team for the on-going support. You're more than welcome to remain with us in the public gallery for a while, because we're going through the Brussels bulletin. The next agenda item is the Brussels bulletin. As you can see, we have less than six minutes to get through, so if you have comments, questions or clarifications on the Brussels bulletin, please give me those now. Do you recall at a previous meeting where some of the members had requested more summary information about the kind of investments that the European Union is making in particular areas? For us to ask for a wee summary of that to be perhaps attached to this document, is there ever going to be any site of that in the bulletin itself, or would that be something separate that we would have to ask to be given to the committee? I think it's important that we can see some of the beneficial, positive programmes that Europe is driving and delivering, particularly for Scotland, but for elsewhere too. That would be very helpful. I think that that might be additional, but we can certainly chase that up for you again and just see what's happening. It may be the break over Christmas and things have pushed the timeline on that a wee bit. Just on the broadband heading on page 6, which notes that the UK is head of the EU average across all technology combinations, however in rural areas the situation is significantly different to the national picture. I think that's the point here. It's all very well painting a rosy picture, but the actual facts of the matter are strictly different. What is happening is that little deserts are being created in the UK, particularly in Scotland rural areas, which then find themselves at distinct advantage, particularly in tourism terms. That's the point that I'd like to make. If you rolled out telephones, every house had a telephone rolled out. Why can't every house have fibre optics? That's my point. Given the keen interest of this committee on the matter and the many times that it has been raised and now the renewed focus from the commission, it's maybe something specifically we should write to the commission on asking them to look at specific areas like the ones you've described. You run the risk of creating an unfair society through this. That's what worries me. Why don't we do that? We raise that specifically with the commission. That's a specific issue. I was going to ask if that could be included in the questions to the commissioner. We certainly can do that as well. That was a question that I also had in mind. It was more in line with what advice she could offer us in terms of us trying to pursue this issue. Digital broadband not being rolled out is disadvantaging people, disadvantaging trade in industry, disadvantaging art, crafts and culture. The disadvantages are boundless and therefore it drives home the importance of broadband being rolled out. The idea about suggesting that it's open to companies to try to make ends meet is not good enough. If they can cherry pick large cities and make large sums of monies, then I think there needs to be a bit of responsibility in terms of what percentage of work needs to be done in rural areas as well. I think that we need a strategy for this and I really wish that we really need to put that in place. We've talked about it for nearly two years now but I still don't see any end to this discussion. We really need to do something about it now. There's a few elements to that. There's the UK Government and the roll-out of 3G and 4G. There's the Scottish Government and their funding and roll-out of broadband and then there's the European aspect to that. Why don't we have a supply chain type of letter going where we're seeking some clarification for the Scottish Government on the progress that they have made with the UK Government and therefore the progress that they have made with the EU? That's well, yes. I think that that would be helpful to you. Any more for the Brussels bulletin? I mean, could I just possibly add to that the time we have left? I mean, there is a really good initiative in Scotland to roll out super-fast broadband, not only to the urban communities but to the highland and rural communities as well. I'm thinking of it more in a European context. If you looked at the position right across Europe, it would be quite a variable picture you would see in the member states in terms of super-fast speeds available in each of these countries. I was thinking that the digital single market might want to embrace that much more clearly to taking a level out and lift standards and speeds, if you like, right across Europe. That's where an opportunity is being missed by taking such a cut to the infrastructure budget in Europe. I think that it's an opportunity missed but I'd still like to see a European perspective on this and how it sees this developing. Okay, we've got all of that. Okay, thank you very much. The next meeting will be on 5 February. We will take evidence from the Deputy First Minister on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which is on going inquiries. I look forward to seeing you then and thank you very much for your attendance this morning. Thank you.