Mr. Francis Jacobs:

I thank the Chairman for his invitation to address the joint committee, which is a great honour. I also welcome the initiative taken by the committee which it has been carrying out in recent weeks and months. Its inquiry is timely. The European Union has been going through a major economic crisis which has undoubtedly weakened support for its institutions and policies.

The measures taken to tackle the crisis have had considerable success, but they have tended to deepen EU integration on an ad hocand sometimes an even intergovernmental basis without some of the corresponding measures to strengthen democratic accountability at either European Parliament or national parliament level. European Parliament elections will be held in just under one year's time. All of these developments could lower turnout and-or lead to a rise in support for populist or protest parties. It is essential, therefore, that the democratic legitimacy of all EU policies, including the evolving Economic and Monetary Union, be strengthened at all levels. The European Parliament passed a resolution last week on this subject in which stated it was "deeply concerned that democratic accountability in the EMU [the fourth building block] has not so far been tackled properly in the Council's deliberations".

In the short period given to me to make my opening remarks I will be telegraphic and will not go into detail. I will look briefly at what I see as some of the key challenges in ensuring democratic accountability and some ways by which this could be better achieved. I will finish by saying a few words about the European Parliament elections in 2014 and the views within the Parliament as to how they might be made more European in nature.

In respect of the key challenges in ensuring democratic accountability, at which the committee has been looking for the past few months, it will always be a difficult task to ensure the accountability of EU-related actions and activities for a number of reasons. Obviously, the complexity of EU structures, the very technical nature of many of its activities, the question of to whom one is accountable - Europeans as a whole, national citizens, etc. - and the very different national mentalities and cultures of 27 and soon to be 28 member states are issues. It has been made even more difficult because it is no longer just about the adoption of EU laws. When one looks at the adoption of EU laws, one can see that the European Parliament has much stronger powers than it used to have. Since the Lisbon treaty, it co-decides with the member states on almost every European law and can amend or even reject them. The committee has seen this in the past few weeks with the negotiations the Presidency is carrying out on the multi-annual financial framework, the CAP, fisheries and many other key policy areas.

When we are talking about EU laws, accountability is less direct than with national parliaments. However, one has the yellow and orange card systems and the possibility of making contributions to the EU legal process. The response to the economic crisis has led to new laws such as the six-pack, the two-pack and now the evolving laws on banking union. What I want to emphasise, in particular, is that the Economic and Monetary Union developments have also reinforced the non-legislative activities of the European Union for which democratic accountability is even more difficult to achieve. A few obvious examples are ex-anteco-ordination of national economic policies, the economic semester, ex-postreporting and monitoring of implementation to see if measures are being properly implemented and enhanced co-operation in which not all member states take part - the obvious example being the financial transaction tax - and the other intergovernmental activities in which not every member state participates such as the measures in the fiscal stability treaty. All of these are more difficult for the European Parliament and national parliaments to account for democratically. They are more Executive-driven and there is less chance to amend or reject them.

What are the possible solutions? In the short period available I will concentrate on process questions, but, of course, the most important things relate to policy. In respect of institutional developments, one thing that may well happen, although not in the short term, is further treaty change. This may include new and stronger rules for democratic accountability, more powers for the European Parliament and, possibly, revisiting the powers of national parliaments. All of these are desirable, but they will involve tough negotiations and will not be available for some time. A variant is more informal agreements between the institutions which the European Parliament is always very keen to negotiate. These would be inter-institutional agreements between the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament such that the Parliament has more say in the process.

Another way of doing it is to build new control powers into individual EU measures. Again, who would participate in these measures? Would it be countries of the eurozone or all states? Would it be intergovernmental or within the EU system?

There are internal changes that could be made. First, the European Parliament could spend more time on these non-legislative powers. It is quite difficult because the European Parliament has fewer formal powers in these areas and it is more difficult to build a real role for itself. It has tried to use its budgetary powers and other formal powers to have more powers in the non-legislative areas, but it is a difficult task. There are a number of techniques that could be used and that have been used in some committees, for example, implementation question time within individual committees and not focusing on new laws but asking questions in the much more informal setting of a committee rather than at a full plenary. There are a number of other ways at which the European Parliament has been looking. It makes much use of the rapporteur system, whereby one individual member of a committee is empowered to draw up a report on a particular subject. One of the suggestions made is that they should not just monitor the adoption of new legislation but also follow through on its implementation. In other words, their role should continue for longer. It involves a person becoming the expert on a particular area and helping to focus debate on it.

The next issue is how to strengthen the role of national parliaments, which is the focus of the committee's inquiry. I emphasise the need for further co-operation between the European Parliament and national parliaments. Some 20 ago when I was working with parliamentary committees, there was relativy little contact between the European Parliament and national parliaments. The process has developed significantly in the past 20 years, but clearly there is scope, not just for formal co-operation but also for informal co-operation, which will probably be even more important in the long run. I will not go into detail, although I am happy to come back on questions. One thing that will be hugely important in the future is making better use of national parliament contributions on legislation and feeding it into the work of European Parliament committees. One has subsidiarity control with the yellow and orange card system. Increasingly, however, national parliaments are making contributions which can be on legislation, but they can also be on communications and non-legislative texts. They are increasingly being sent to the sectoral committees of the European Parliament, but there is much scope for them to play more of a role and for more account to be taken of them in the future.

Another very important issue is that of increasing openness and transparency in all its aspects. This involves access to documents, better information on what is being proposed and discussed and texts being more clearly written rather than in jargon. Providing better information for citizens on how the European Union works is also very important. The Danish Parliament has a very good system for informing its citizens about the European Parliament. It was one of the things that inspired the European Parliament to have its own visitor centre which has been in operation in Brussels for a couple of years and has been hugely successful in giving people an idea about the European Union, the history of the European Parliament, how it works and a flavour of it.

Obviously, these are all ways by which changes could be made. What are the preconditions for this to work based on my experience in the European Parliament?

One, of course, is adequate resources to finance the necessary expertise, because democratic accountability within the European Parliament, and probably within in all parliaments, is very people-intensive. To do the job well, especially in these non-legislative areas, takes a lot of resources. Another precondition is for adequate time to be set aside. Within the European Parliament there was always a tendency for the non-legislative work to be crowded out by the legislative work, where the European Parliament had real powers. It is very important that adequate time is set aside for the non-legislative control work. Another very important precondition, especially in relations between the European Parliament and national parliaments, is continuity of contacts. I was involved, from the European Parliament side in committees, in accompanying members of parliaments at many inter-parliamentary meetings. As the clerk for the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety committee, for example - my last job before I came to this one - I went to approximately four or five meetings of environment committees. At national parliament and European Parliament level there were different members on each occasion, which undercut continuity of contact. I know how difficult it is to achieve somewhat greater continuity, but it helps a lot. Priority setting is important too. Any parliament - and the European Parliament is no exception - has to pick its battles. There is so much within the European Union that priority setting is absolutely key.

At the moment the European Union is perceived as remote and dominated by one or more big member states. There needs to be far more emphasis on strengthening the community method and on getting all member states involved. There needs to be - to use a tired but extraordinarily important word - solidarity between the member states and better implementation of what has been agreed. One thing that has developed a great deal but in a rather uneven way in the debate on economic and monetary union is readiness to criticise individual member states. There was always an unspoken rule that one did not criticise other states, and that has become a more important feature, but is also a very sensitive and difficult one.

Finally, I will comment briefly on the European Parliament elections and the views within the Parliament as to how these might be made more European in nature. The slogan that will be used is "This time, it's different." It refers to two aspects: one, of course, is the fact that since the Lisbon treaty the European Parliament has more powers in terms of budget, agriculture, fisheries and almost all legislative areas. The other aspect is that it is the intention of the political groups in the Parliament to make the elections more European and more political than before. Two weeks ago the Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs adopted the Duff report on a Commission communication on the conduct of the European elections, and that will come up soon - perhaps in the next plenary session - for final adoption within the Parliament. The report highlights three proposed changes, one of which is to bring forward the date of the elections. This has already been decided, so we now know that the next European Parliament elections will not take place in June, as they always have in the past, but over the four days between 22 and 25 May. The purpose of this was largely to allow more time to choose the Commission - first the President of the Commission and then the hearings of all the Irish and other Commissioners - so that the job can be done properly before the summer break and before the Parliament returns to normal legislative mode in the autumn. In the past this has been telescoped into the month of July. The idea is to have more time to do this. That is one of the key reasons for the change of date. The Duff report also puts forward several other suggestions, such as insisting that in countries where candidates are chosen only at the last moment, this be done at least six weeks in advance. I do not think that will be a problem in Ireland, but it is in some countries. It recommends having more women candidates than before, if possible, and equality, if possible, in list systems and so on.

The second big change is that European political parties are being encouraged to be on the ballot papers for the next European elections. The Parliament wants national political parties to publicise their European political party affiliations when they come to the next election. That is a national competence at the moment but the European Parliament is trying to encourage them to put names and, if possible, emblems on ballot papers and, if possible, to have political broadcasts by the European political parties.

The third change is perhaps the most controversial and difficult of all: to have nominations from the European political parties for post of President of the European Commission. The Parliament wants the political parties to put these candidates forward sufficiently in advance. It asks that national parties taking part in the elections say whom they support and wishes to promote the political programmes of these candidates through a series of public debates between the different candidates and so on. We do not know how this will work out for the selection of the President of the Commission. The Duff report talks of encouraging the Parliament and the European Council to agree on the method for doing this by common accord. The Committee on Constitutional Affairs stated that it "expects that 'the candidate for Commission President who was put forward by the European political party that wins the most seats in the Parliament will be the first to be considered' with a view to 'ascertaining his or her ability to secure the support of the necessary absolute majority in Parliament'."

I am very happy to answer any questions and look forward to working with this committee and its staff over the coming period. I thank the committee for its attention.