Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I am grateful to the Minister of State for his long reply, about which I will ask a complex supplementary question. The question I tabled was about accountability and I propose to make the matter simple. The European Parliament can have access to information on the Common Foreign and Security Policy it but has no right of decision. While it can summon people to appear before it, areas which are matters for intergovernmental competence will, as the Minister of State noted, remain matters for intergovernmental competence. The question of accountability then runs on to national parliaments.

I asked what additional accountability mechanisms would be available to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs or the plenary session of any member state parliament and to whom the new foreign minister of the European Union would report. I can concentrate the matter by putting the question in a concrete way. In 2003, a sub-committee of the permanent ambassadors of COREPER, the clearing committee consisting of five people, decided to add Hamas to a list of proscribed organisations. This decision had immense implications for Middle East policy. A common position was also announced in response to elections in Palestine in 2006. There was no accountability for these decisions in the plenary session of the Oireachtas, the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs or the European Parliament, which organises regular visits to Palestine but has no competence in this area. It is proposed that this absence of accountability will continue in the intergovernmental process and the proposed new post. I have serious reservations about the unaccountable positions taken up by Javier Solana, particularly on the Middle East.

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