Official Report 249KB pdf
Agenda item 3 is the paper that we receive regularly that sifts European Union legislative proposals. I will draw several documents to the committee's attention. The first is the Commission's "Annual Policy Strategy for 2006", which is the first formal element of the Commission's policy planning for the next year. It sets out policy priorities, identifies key legislative and other initiatives and adopts the budgetary framework for handling them. The document is broad and relates to the interests of a variety of parliamentary committees, so do we agree that it should be shared with other parliamentary committees as suggested?
The next paper is a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and the Council to establish an institute for gender equality, which is accompanied by an annex that evaluates the proposal. The recommendation is that we pass that to the Equal Opportunities Committee for it to reflect on as part of its continuing responsibilities. Is that agreed?
The third document is a consultation paper that considers the complications that can arise in settling the succession of people who have partners who are citizens of another member state. It examines the need to adopt harmonised European rules on testate and intestate succession. That will be of particular interest to the justice committees, to which I recommend passing the document. Is that agreed?