Mr. Alan Dukes:

If I may, I tend to concentrate on the issues relating to the semester, in part because I wrote one of the papers we published some time ago about the semester. There obviously is a great deal of interest in it among members of the joint committee. The first point to make is the Commission has itself suggested, in the announcement of 21 October and other documentation it published around then, that it is looking again at the semester process to ascertain what might be learnt from experience thus far and how it might be improved. I will set this out in a schematic way and members will see how this relates to the semester process. In November of each year, the Commission publishes its annual growth survey. That goes through a process that leads to certain orientations being taken by the European Council, which in turn are taken into account by the Commission, which then, around April, produces country-specific recommendations.

The view that we have taken in the institute is that national parliaments should use that process to negotiate a way to achieve the kinds of objectives set out at both national and EU levels for economic policy and to influence the shaping of a budget. That would mean the following things in broad terms. This month the Commission will produce its annual growth survey, which looks to the year ahead and a period after that. It then proposes to reinforce the process it has with the European Parliament to discuss this annual growth survey, including the European Parliamentary Week, when the Commission would engage in a fairly detailed discussion with the European Parliament about the prospects for the year ahead and after that. That process leads to the production of the country specific recommendations.

The Commission itself - it has not really explained this in great detail - has made the point in its most recent documentation that it believes it should probably specify a smaller number of objectives for the country specific recommendations. The purpose of that would be to take out the key strategic points and not to get too involved in detail because, of course, budgets are set out by national governments and the Commission is aware of the sensitivities around that. It seems to us that it is at the point where country specific recommendations are published after that process - the European Union level process first and then the national level - that national parliaments have the opportunity to get involved in designing economic and fiscal policy for the following year and preparing what comes out after that. There is a period after the publication of the country specific recommendations when there is an engagement between the Commission and national governments and there is the possibility for engagement between national parliaments and their governments and national parliaments and the Commission. The Commission has made the point that it wants to look again at the mechanisms or possibilities for direct interaction between the Commission and national parliaments about the substance of what the Commission has proposed in the country specific recommendations. That, it seems to us, is the key part of the process for national parliaments to get involved in budget-building.

Under the semester process the national governments produce what is described as a draft budget in October of a given year. That is then put to the national parliaments and the Commission has a certain amount of time to comment on it afterwards. It has not happened yet - I do not say "yet" in any ominous way - that the Commission has said anything very disobliging about a national budget after it went to a national parliament but the structure of the system is that if the Commission believes that the national budget departs in any substantial way from the overall objectives, it can speak to the national governments again and there is at least the theoretical possibility that some parts of budgetary strategy or emphasis might be changed. The point we were concerned to make is that the semester process itself gives new opportunities for national parliaments and the European Parliament to get involved in the budget-building process. The Commission is aware of that and is setting out to encourage national parliaments to do that in a more energetic way.

Since the semester process was instituted, the Houses of the Oireachtas has been involved, to an extent that it had not been before, in that kind of process. As a citizen and as an observer of these matters, I would like to see the Houses of the Oireachtas using that process to a greater extent than it does. If I may say - this is an opinion that goes back a long time with me - it seems not to be very useful from a practical point of view for national parliaments and parties in national parliaments to produce budget plans a week or two before the actual budget rather than several months before the budget is finally fixed. I can speak from personal experience - I am not letting out any secrets - that by the time one gets to a week or two before the actual budget day, there has been a fair amount of discussion internally in Government about what goes into the budget and a whole series of accommodations have been reached, some of them difficult, some of them delicate, some obvious and some not so obvious. It is pretty futile that if another party or another group outside the Government comes up with a really good idea, it will have to be an extremely good one to disturb the balance of what has been achieved in Government, whereas if the process has been going on in a more detailed and upfront way since April, there is a better opportunity for people to have an influence and for ideas to be manufactured.

We must not lose sight of the fact that, although, as in all these things, the expression of it in the documents is not the most gripping - it is very turgid in fact - the process and the conditions the Commission sets around the budgetary process make very explicit reference to a number of qualitative objectives in the budget in terms of social impact and impact on things like employment. If there is greater engagement between the Commission and national parliaments, there is automatically more room to draw attention to the social impacts of budgetary and fiscal policies than might be the case if such interaction did not take place. All of this, in my view, pleads for a much more active involvement of national parliaments. It is pretty clear from the way the documents have been written that the Commission is serious about that and an early engagement between the Commission and national parliaments could be very useful. The process itself leads to the possibility of a situation where there is almost a negotiation of a budget over a period in the political system. This is something I have always felt was very useful and it happens in some member states. We have long gone past the point where - this is an observation from outside - everybody wonders what is going to be in the budget until the Minister for Finance actually announces it. It is fair to say that budgets in recent years have produced very few surprises, in terms of people knowing largely what will be in them.