Activity
1. This report covers our work from January 2008
to November 2008. Previous reports have been based on the calendar
year, but this and subsequent annual reports on the work of the
Committee will be based on the parliamentary session. As the 2007
report covered the calendar year until 31 December 2007,[1]
this report covers the period from 1 January to 26 November 2008.
2. Our core task was to examine on behalf of
the House the EU documents deposited in Parliament, to assess
their legal and political importance and to determine which should
be debated.[2] During the
period covered by this report, 886 documents were examined,[3]
398 were deemed of legal and/or political importance and 50 were
recommended for debate. 24 debates took place in European [Standing]
Committees (sometimes covering several documents) and two on the
Floor of the House. We used our power to seek an opinion on a
document from another select committee on two occasions.
3. In addition to the forty weekly reports to
the House on the scrutiny of documents, we carried out a number
of inquiries and produced individual reports on Conclusions
of the European Council and the Council of Ministers,[4]
(an inquiry which began in 2007), and Subsidiarity, National
Parliaments and the Lisbon Treaty. [5]
4. As in previous years, we continued to take
oral evidence sessions from Ministers, outside organisations
and individuals. Our oral evidence sessions are set out in Table
1.
Table 1 Oral evidence taken by the European Scrutiny
Committee in 2008