 Welcome to the 19th meeting of 2014, if I can just let members know, we have a slightly different format for the Brussels bulletin this morning, so I'll be hoping for feedback once we get there. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones and electronic devices Y gendat item 1 is to take items 3 and 4 in private or committee content. Y gendat item 2 is the Brussels bulletin, and as I mentioned, the open and Brussels bulletin has changed its format slightly. There was becoming real problems because the actual template was quite unstable. I went with a new format, but it is much more accessible in the Scottish Parliament's standards as far as accessible documents go. We can talk about the format of the Brussels bulletin after we have dealt with some of the content of the Brussels bulletin house. Any questions or comments? Do you want to comment on the layout? Yeah, quickly, yeah. Can we not use as much colour as we are doing? I do not think that that is eco-friendly. Okay. It is black and white, simple and fine. We can do an annual report. It can be all dazzling and colourful, but I do not want to waste so much ink just for papers for committee. Molly? It is going to be just on the shape. I mean, it looks okay. It is as readable as it was the last time. I find it quite an easy read. The only comment, perhaps, would be some of the graphics are a wee bit difficult to read in that format. If you look at the graphic of the European Commission and the appendix here, it is quite hard to see that. If we are doing graphics, we may ask them to do a full page of some of those graphics so we can read the text. That would be my only comment, but, otherwise, it is a really nice, readable, attractively presented piece of information for us. Yeah. Katie has just informed me that that format and the sizing of it is a copyright thing, so maybe just using that information to create a different... Does it make it bigger? A part on the size and everything, it is all copyrighty. You do not like it. I have preferred the last one. I prefer the further where they had it before. I do not know why the change. Well, the actual template that he was for, it became really, really unstable and it was just jumping all over the page and it was becoming very difficult to... I find the whole thing... I have to say that the original one we used to get was far more concise, far less wordy, far better than the ones we... and the things got more and more wordy, more and more flannel, I think. You know, in the last year, I will say. I think that might be our fault because we keep asking for additional information, to be honest. We keep asking for more detail and other things, so they are trying to maybe just pack as much detail and... Well, they could do with... They seem to use 30 words when they could use two. I mean, that is what the feeling I get with it. So it is too wordy. Okay. But that is only my own opinion. Yeah. What about the content? Is there anybody to get anything to say about the content? There is one thing I would like to say about the... On the thing on Russian ban on imports, I had a conversation yesterday with the... The chap who is the head of the Scottish Salmon producers who said that... I said, well, is this hurting you? And he said, well, not really because we send our exports to Belarus or someone, you know, that they pick up the slack in the countries that can't... You know, that can't send... It's all being... They don't seem to be losing any business. Yeah. All right, okay. That's interesting. They seem to get in through other doors. That's why they're interested by that. Shifted to supply chain? Yes. That's a good thing because it just means that we have recognised another avenue of more exports. So indirectly it does hurt us because we're losing one market but gaining another is welcome. Losing one is not welcome. It's been quite a blow to the white fish industry, for the pelagic industry, because the price, the general price has dropped as a result of this, but they seem to be soldiering on. Okay, Roder. Yeah, I've just a couple of comments rather than the other. So I'm interested in the comments in relation to TITIP and kind of a disagreement with Jean-Claude Juncker. And I think it remains an interesting subject. And obviously if this committee is going to park in on Clary, hopefully we have a much better idea of this whole issue at the end of our evidence sessions. The other thing I thought was interesting in terms of the whole issue of migration into the EU. Kind of I read the section on page 13 on migrants for some interest. Filming with a great deal of confidence that the European Parliament was really, and the European Union were really on top of issues in terms of migration. Yeah, there's a lot of really negative rhetoric merging around about it as well. We will have our MEPs in front of the committee in a few weeks' time, so you can garner some of these questions to speak to the MEPs a bit. Willie Coffey. Thanks, Gideon. I'm going to bring to your attention the item on page 3 of the report. It's under the heading creative industries. Members will see that the European Commission is interested in preservation of cultural assets and so on through the digital media and also preservation of film. As you probably know, in Scotland, we've got two bodies that have got substantial and long experience in this. One is the Scottish Screen Archive, who's got a long history and expertise in this area, and the other is the SCRAN, cultural resources access network, who provide digital resources, principally for schools in Scotland. It was just to draw that to members' attention and perhaps to ask if those two organisations could be copied into this briefing to see if there might be an opportunity for them to do some work in a European context and deploy their long and expertise that they have on this field. Yeah, excellent idea. That's a good point. Glasgow City Council also has a filming section within its DRS department, and I'm sure that a copy to DRS wouldn't go amiss as well to encourage because they've been dealing with Bollywood and Hollywood and various other film industries in Glasgow, so I think that that also might be an opportunity for them. Be surprised if this is the first initiative of this type, even in Europe. There must be some kind of initiatives under way throughout Europe. So I'm interested in what's perhaps new about this because I can't imagine for a moment that all our European colleagues have just began to think about the process of digitising their own cultural assets and so on and so forth. So if there's any further information on exactly what's behind that, that would be appreciated too, thanks. Yep, yep, okay. Jimmy. I don't know if anybody understands what he means. When it says, on page 18, taking on board criticism expressed by MEPs, Mr Juncker, when he gets to the bit, he said he could not agree to the proposal to delete the word negotiations and the title of the enlargement portfolio, which has spelt wrong, portfolio has spelt wrong, as this would mean deluding the EU countries. What does that mean? That's a press release that was put out. Yes, but it hasn't got no significance whatsoever. It's just like something out of the blue. It doesn't inform me about anything. Who does this now, this report? Who does it? It's Scotland Europa. I mean, I just feel that there's bits like that. You know, it's all very well to put it in, but there's no explanation of what it's talking about. We can never give you an explanation of the record on it. Oh, do you know what it is? Yeah. Oh, it's okay. Right, okay. We'll have a wee chat after. Okay. Yep. Any other comments? Billy. Thanks again, convener. It's new. The little comment on page 10 there, if members see that, again, it's under digital skills and some report by the European Commission that found true digital skills among school pupils. I'm quite surprised at that, if that's the case, actually. I wonder if there's more information we can get to tell us what the thinking is there at. I would imagine that, particularly amongst our youngsters and certainly in Scotland schools, their digital skill level is actually pretty good, pretty high, I would think. So I wonder where they're coming from on that and where they would propose to go to if that's what they're thinking is. Ah, it's maybe an EU-ride measure. I'm interested in finding out just what's thinking is there, because I don't think that's a case in Scotland. No. There might be an idea just for some clarity chair in terms of which countries are showing that they are behind and whether we are being judged as being behind or not and if we are, what are the basis of that and address them if need be. That's a good point to pick up on. Yeah, that's good. Of course. Yeah, we can investigate that. Any other comments about the Brussels bulletin? There's only one thing that I wanted to pick up on and it was in page 12 of the Justices and Home Affairs section. There's obviously quite fee-browed debate going on at Westminster about opt-ins and opt-outs and what the UK Government's going to opt back into and maybe a wee bit of feedback during recess, the Parliament held a seminar with all... Was it a seminar? A summit. Summit, yeah, summit. That's the part that I was looking for. Which Rod and I attended on human trafficking and it was to create a co-ordinated approach with all the justice officials across the whole of the UK to deal with human trafficking. It was really interesting and an excellent way forward for working together. But one of the key themes that came out of that is with the justice opt-ins and opt-outs and Rodgie Prollin in a much better position to explain this and I would ever be was the issue about the European arrest warrant and the impact that that would any changes would have on that, Rodgie. You've got that. Thank you for saying that throughout across the board the prosecutors from the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales, the Lord Advocate and indeed I think representatives of the prosecution service in Northern Ireland were all kind of strongly opposed to any suggestion that we shouldn't hop back into the European arrest warrant. The other interesting about the summit was also representatives from the prosecution service in the Republic of Ireland. So it was a British Isles Isles event which in the issues such as these I think you need to look beyond just technical boundaries. Indeed, indeed. That was all that I wanted to raise from Brussels Billet and any more, Alec. Are you happy to? You're okay? Yeah. Okay. Happy to direct the Brussels Billet into the legitimate committees. Yeah. Yeah. And deal with the points that have been raised from it. Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much. We are now going to move on to agenda item three which we agreed to take private. So I briefly suspend to allow our public gallery to be cleared.