Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA)
Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO)
Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA)
National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
30 July 2021
Evidence to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee
Inquiry into the institutional framework of the UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement
Executive Summary and Recommendations
Introduction
Transparency
Recommendations
We would encourage the Committee to recommend:
Engagement and dialogue with the voluntary sector and devolved governments
Recommendations
We would welcome recommendations by the Committee that the UK Government:
How is the EU approaching implementation?
Recommendations
We would encourage the Committee to recommend:
Question responses - Introductory comments
1.1 We believe that formalised mechanisms for engaging Northern Ireland Civil Society on the implementation of the TCA including the NI Protocol would be valuable and helpful in informing how future arrangements can best be implemented for the good of all.
2.2 The main vehicle for facilitating civic society cooperation in the TCA is the CSF referenced in Articles 12 and 14. These provisions create a duty for the parties to consult civil society on the implementation of the agreement via the DAGs and the aforementioned CSF.
2.3 Article 13 further provides that the DAGs shall also include representation from civic society organisations active in economic, sustainable development, social, human rights, environmental and other matters. UK and EU DAGs are another vehicle by which civil society organisations (CSOs) can contribute to deepening cooperation.
2.4 Article 14 provides basic guidelines for the CSF which is to include a balanced representation (emphasis added to contrast with the DAGs) of CSOs active in economic, sustainable development, social, human rights, environmental and other matters.
2.5 Crucially we note that the Civil Society provisions of the TCA were changed during negotiations, as we understand it, by request of the UK Government:
3.1 The TCA provisions in this area are limited to state-to-state disputes and have very limited provisions directly involving other stakeholders - we therefore have only limited input. Broadly speaking we see them as in line with existing WTO practice – although the rebalancing mechanism is novel. Clearly the scope for unilateral action in this mechanism is significant and this could have an impact on policy formulation. However, as it is untested and we do not yet understand how the concepts of ‘significant divergence’ or ‘material impact’ will be interpreted, we do not yet have a sense of how it might influence the UK’s regulatory autonomy. We also welcome the exclusion of investor-state dispute settlement procedures.
3.2 There are two main points of relevance to the voluntary sector and wider civil society that we would like to raise.
3.3 Firstly, there appears to be no clear mechanism implemented at the UK level for CSOs to raise issues pertaining to the implementation of the TCA with the UK Government. The intention is clearly that formal dispute resolution mechanisms will exclusively involve the parties, however, we believe it is important for wider stakeholders in both the UK and EU to be able to submit information and have a dialogue with the parties where issues surrounding the TCA arise. In the EU – this is achieved via an online portal.[1] In the UK it would seem this is to take place via the UK Government’s looser commitment to engage with the sector around the TCA and via the DAGs. However, commitments to involving civil society thus far have been weak and unclear. We cannot find a formal mechanism for raising issues with the UK Government, or indeed even who the appropriate contact would be, given the paucity of coordinated information online. We recommend that to mitigate the lack of representation for individual and wider stakeholder interests in the dispute resolution mechanism, a single online portal be established by the UK Government around the TCA which would include (amongst other transparency related matters) a means for raising issues with the Government.
3.4 Secondly, we welcome the inclusion in article 751 (3) and annex 48 paragraph 40 of an Amicus Curae procedure. This allows civil society stakeholders, such as environmental organisations, to provide unsolicited written submissions to the arbitration panel to help inform the dispute resolution process. However, it is currently unclear what transparency measures will be in place to enable interested stakeholders to identify, follow and submit evidence for specific disputes.
4.3 The complexity of the institutional arrangements and limited capacity in the voluntary sector further amplifies the need for the transparent provision of information on the operation of the TCA institutions so that stakeholders with information on the practical effects of the agreement can proactively engage. Without commitments to this level of transparency it will be challenging for civil society to share information with the relevant TCA bodies and to maintain the ‘close relationships’ Lord Frost referred to as necessary to feed information up to the UK Government when he gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union on 9 February 2021.[2] We would welcome further information on the team responsible for maintaining contact that he also referred to.
4.4 While we welcome the commitments to transparency in Annex 1 of the TCA, these are too limited in our view. Rules 10 and 13 provide that provisional agendas are to be published before meetings of the Partnership Council and Committees and rules 8, 10 and 13 provide that the minutes shall be made public following their approval. However, neither set of commitments provide a timeframe for this to happen. Furthermore, several of the provisions are optional – for example rule 10 (2) provides that the parties ‘may’ publish decisions and recommendations of the Partnership Council. We encourage the parties to go beyond the TCA commitments in these areas.
4.5 In practice the implementation even of these limited commitments seems inconsistent and we are finding it challenging to identify what materials are available, whether they will be made available and when key meetings are due to take place. For example, the UK Government and the EU published the agenda for the first meeting of the Partnership Council on their websites on 7 June with the meeting taking place on 9 June. The agendas for the first Specialised Committee meetings were either not published or are too difficult to find on the UK Government website. This contrasts somewhat with the EU approach where we have been able to locate the agendas for several Committees’ first meetings, however again, these were not published in a timely fashion (the Specialised Committee of Fisheries’ agenda was published one day before the meeting on the EC website).[3]
4.6 We note that the EC website has collated the various agendas for the first meetings into a single page and that this does not currently appear to be the case on the UK Government website. Materials pertaining to the institutional structure of the Withdrawal Agreement do have a ‘collection’[4] which aggregates policy documents and materials, but even this is not straightforward to locate on the Brexit landing page. Meanwhile, documents pertaining to the TCA and its bodies appear to have to be manually searched for amongst the list of all the ‘policy papers and consultations’,[5] which offers no useful categorisation. There is a missed opportunity to collate agendas, schedule for upcoming meetings, minutes and relevant contact details for both the TCA and the Withdrawal Agreement on the main Brexit page. Furthermore, this page could also act as a portal for stakeholders to raise issues with the UK Government.
4.7 We would also encourage the parties to go beyond releasing only ‘statements’ following meetings,[6] as these lack any useful details. We also note that despite the deadline being passed for approving the minutes of the first Partnership Council meeting, at the time of writing, no minutes have been published yet (and this commitment in the treaty is not optional).
4.8 We also note that there is currently no information available about how:
a. the UK Government proposes to organise the UK DAG(s) and the CSF, both of which are clearly important to our sector
b. how civil society representatives will be recruited
c. how wider engagement will take place
d. how the devolved governments and the interests of stakeholders from the four parts of the UK will be represented in the system
e. and where the secretariat will sit.
4.10 Furthermore, careful consideration will need to be given to how the UK’s devolved nature is reflected in the UK DAG structure. We recommend that the UK DAG have thematic sub-structures to enable geographic representation from the governments and civil societies of each of the four parts of the UK.
5.1 We acknowledge that future regulatory divergence between the UK and the EU may cause concerns for the parties, but we would also highlight that civil society in the UK and in the EU shares a wide range of common policy interests. A recurring theme of the voluntary sector’s discussions about the implications of Brexit has been the sector’s concern over the loss of links with European partners, and any potential negative impact this may have on opportunities for sharing knowledge and best practice across borders. This learning and information sharing has been valuable for the voluntary sector and there is a desire to maintain and deepen these connections both within and outside of the formal TCA arrangements.
5.2 As highlighted in the previous question on dispute resolution, it is unclear how individual stakeholders can raise their concerns with the UK Government in relation to the implementation of the TCA. Given that the formal dispute resolution mechanism is limited to state-to-state disputes, it is particularly important that channels of communication with relevant TCA bodies be made available to the sector if issues are to be raised for discussion. However, given the current inaccessibility of information at the UK level around the organisation of the TCA institutions, it is currently difficult to see how stakeholders can highlight concerns about legal and policy developments to these fora. To illustrate this point, it is currently easier for us to identify relevant contacts to discuss the implementation of the TCA via colleagues in the EU than with the UK Government.
5.3 We recommend that the UK Government considers making an interactive portal similar to the one used by the EC available for stakeholders to communicate concerns,[7] and that the contact details of departments leading on various aspects of the TCA be made available.
5.5 Finally, as the CSF is the main vehicle for civil society to discuss legal and policy developments surrounding the implementation of the TCA – and that civic society is at the forefront of experiencing the new UK/EU relationship, it seems odd that it cannot make recommendations to the Trade Partnership Committee.
6.2 In some parts of the UK the voluntary sector typically has regular and highly structured engagement with their devolved government. For example, in Wales this has a statutory basis in the form of the Third Sector Scheme and Third Sector Partnership Council. Engaging the devolved governments at an early stage will further facilitate consultation with our sector via these mechanisms and support the identification of issues to share with TCA bodies.
6.3 We also believe it is also important for the UK and devolved governments to encourage discussion in their respective legislatures on the role of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. In particular around how to structure devolved input. The scale of the task of scrutinising the many facets of the UK / EU relationship moving forward is significant – requiring stakeholders to monitor discussions in the TCA bodies as well as the devolved, UK and EU legislative landscapes across numerous areas. As such, opportunities for constructive discussion within the UK across governments, legislatures and sectors should be coordinated and maximised.
6.4 We would encourage the UK Government to open and maintain coordinated and regular dialogue with the voluntary sector as a part of its role in representing the UK in joint TCA bodies. Following the initial delays in ratifying the TCA and the subsequent lack of information surrounding the first Partnership Council meeting, we are working to establish new lines of communication with the UK Government to discuss what structures we can help put in place at the UK level to facilitate this. In particular we are keen to explore ways to coordinate discussion at the devolved level around issues arising from the implementation of the TCA, with a view to feeding these up to a new UK level Civil Society Forum comprised of stakeholders with interest and expertise in this area. If recognised by the UK Government as an interlocutor, a platform such as this could usefully support discussions in and around the joint bodies and facilitate Government engagement with a cross-section of the voluntary sector that is also representative of devolution.
7.1 We have maintained close contact with EU colleagues on the implementation of the TCA’s civil society provisions and as a result have more information available to us on how they are being implemented in the EU than in the UK. Prior to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, we hosted the European Economic and Social Committee’s (EESC) Brexit Follow-up Group in each of the four parts of the UK, to discuss future cooperation within the context of the future relationship agreement.
7.2 This group has been replaced by the EESC EU-UK Follow-up Committee which is supported and organised by the EESC External Relations section (REX). This group has met several times already, including with some of our representatives. It has two mandates:
7.3 On the TCA – until the DAG is established:
a. Regular engagement with the Commission relevant services to shape the future EU DAG, secure clarifications on the deal and share feedback from civil society on the early days of implementation;
b. Re-establishing contacts with UK civil society in preparation for the creation of a UK DAG
c. Monitoring of the ratification process as well as the European Parliament consent
d. Liaising with the Follow-up Committee on International Trade.
7.4 And its non-TCA related functions are:
a. Monitoring progress on future area for cooperation with the UK
b. Monitoring the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement (rights of citizens, Northern Ireland Protocol…)
c. Monitoring of other agreements like the Civil and safe use of nuclear energy
d. Monitoring UK developments relevant to EESC priorities;
e. Coordinating communication across the EESC on EU-UK relevant issues, centralising feedback from sections and disseminating reports and updates to Section Presidents.
f. Building ties with the UK mission in Brussels.
7.5 The EESC will also serve as the secretariat for the EU’s TCA DAG and be their primary vehicle for organising the CSF. The EU DAG will mirror the EESC’s method for representing civil society – that is to say equal numbers of representatives from the third, private and trade union sectors. It is suspected that this will be a comparatively large group compared to other DAGs, with numerous observers, given the breadth of the TCA compared to other treaties. A few positions on the DAG will be reserved for EESC members, and the remaining members are being chosen via a recruitment process launched by the Commission on 9 June 2021.[8] The EU DAG will meet 2-3 times a year and will aim to publish its minutes, though its activities are limited by its resources and the capacity of the EESC’s ability to serve as the secretariat.
7.6 We believe that the role played by of the DAG secretariat will be crucial and we know from the EU’s trading history that its partners sometimes struggle to support their own DAG(s). To mitigate this, early consideration should be given to the role and locus of the UK DAG secretariat. While the EU chooses to have a single DAG per trade agreement, this does not have to be the case in the UK – for example Canada maintains two separate DAGs for the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (one on labour and one on the environment). Given the UK’s devolved nature and the novel breadth of the TCA, we recommend that the UK Government gives careful consideration to a DAG formation that is representative. This might involve having a single DAG with sub groups across themes to enable discussions to reflect devolution for example. We would welcome a conversation with the UK Government on how we can support a structured role for the voluntary sector in this process.
7.7 The EU’s approach to institutionalised engagement with civil society means that in navigating the civil society provisions of trade agreements, the political and organisational objective is to ensure that the CSF is a helpful exercise in informing the parties’ joint work on implementing and reviewing the agreement. This requires close coordination and discussion between the sector and the parties as well as sufficient time to organise. We have concerns that the UK Government is approaching the civil society provisions of the TCA too slowly and is not communicating sufficiently with the sector to comfortably organise the CSF in 2021. Particularly given that the various steps we highlighted in answer to the question on transparency must take place beforehand.
7.8 We are concerned that there will be a representativeness and engagement gap between the EU and the UK’s approaches to implementing the civil society provisions of the TCA that will frustrate the organisation of the CSF as a representative and useful exercise. This is partly due to the UK lacking a platform at the UK level, recognised by the UK Government, to coordinate collective discussions within and with civil society. This has made it much more difficult to have high level discussions that are geographically representative around how the sector discharges the role provided for it by the TCA (and other trade agreements). At the EU level mainstreaming discussions and the organisation of DAGs and the CSF through the EESC has guaranteed that civil society at the EU level has had structured engagement on implementing the TCA’s provisions. We also note that the recruitment process for the EU DAG started almost 2 months ago, that the EU already has an online portal available for civil society to contact the Commission with complaints about the TCA and has started collating transparency related materials online (it is currently only possible to locate Specialised Committee meeting agendas on the EU’s website).
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[1] See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en#complaints
[2] Select Committee on the European Union, ‘Oral Evidence: Future UK-EU Relations: Governance’, available at: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1703/pdf/
[3] See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement/meetings-eu-uk-partnership-council-and-specialised-committees-under-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en
[4] See: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/withdrawal-agreement-joint-committee
[5] See: https://www.gov.uk/search/policy-papers-and-consultations?parent=%2Fbrexit&topic=d6c2de5d-ef90-45d1-82d4-5f2438369eea
[6] See the UK Government statement following the first Partnership Council Meeting here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-statement-on-the-meeting-of-the-partnership-council-9-june-2021; and the EU’s here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/statement-european-commission-following-first-meeting-partnership-council-under-eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement-0_en
[7] See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en#complaints
[8] See: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/default/files/2021-06-09-call-eu-domestic-advisory-group-eu-uk-trade-cooperation-agreement.pdf