About the Scottish Parliament's European Union Strategy
The Scottish Parliament’s European Union Strategy was developed to respond to the changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (particularly the Treaty’s Protocol on Subsidiarity, which specifically promotes the role of sub-state parliaments). The Parliament debated and agreed to introduce a Parliament-wide strategy for EU engagement and scrutiny on 9 December 2010.
The strategy is explained in the 4th report, 2010, of the European and External Relations Committee.
The strategy, as agreed, sets out the principal role of the Parliament with regards EU matters, which is ‘to scrutinise the Scottish Government and its EU engagement’. To fulfil this scrutiny function, the Parliament agreed to:
- develop an early engagement approach and set an ‘upstream’ agenda based upon intelligence gathering and analysis of EU policy making at the earliest (pre-legislative) stages;
- mainstream the scrutiny of draft EU legislation to subject committees; and
- mainstream the ‘downstream’ monitoring of the transposition and implementation of legislation to subject committees.
The European and External Relations Committee produces an annual Report on the European Engagement of the Scottish Parliament's Committees, outlining the EU-related engagement undertaken by the committees of the Parliament each autumn. It also considers the European Commission’s Work Programme and brings together a series of subject-specific reports from each of the Scottish Parliament’s subject committees and Equal Opportunities Committee in a single report which is the subject of a debate in the Chamber early in each calendar year.