AREA OF FREEDOM, SECURITY
AND JUSTICE: UK OPT-INS
Letter from the Chairman to the Rt Hon
Baroness Ashton of Upholland, Lord President of the Council and
Leader of the House of Lords
You will remember that the European
Union Committee, in its report The Treaty of Lisbon: an impact
assessment, considered the position on Parliamentary scrutiny
of Government decisions on whether or not to opt in to particular
measures under Title V of the TFEU. We concluded (paragraph 6.275
of our report) that this was a matter to which we should give
further consideration. We have now set up a small group to look
into this.
Currently there is no separate scrutiny of
decisions on whether or not to opt in to measures under TEC Title
IV; decisions are mentioned in the explanatory memoranda and are
dealt with simply as part of the scrutiny of the proposal. We
will be considering whether this scrutiny will be adequate when
the range of measures to which the opt-in applies is greatly increased,
and also looking also at the special position in relation to amending
measures.
The group will be meeting for the first
time on Tuesday 29 April, and it would be very helpful if I could
have before then a note setting out the Government's current thinking
on what Parliamentary control there should be of such Government
decisions, and how you feel it would work in practice, particularly
given the time constraints on the notification of decisions to
the Council.
23 April 2008
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