Lords dismiss EU Proposal for EU-wide legislation on entry conditions for third-country nationals
21 October 2010
A report by the Lords EU Select Committee entitled Subsidiarity assessment: admission of third-country nationals as seasonal workers was debated in the House of Lords on 20 October. The report contained a reasoned opinion which set out why the Committee considered that the Proposal did not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. This principle states that action should only be taken at EU level if the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States acting on their own, and if they can be better achieved by action on the part of the EU.
The House of Lords agreed with the Committee's assessment and instructed the Clerk of the Parliaments to forward the reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European institutions. This was the first occasion on which the House of Lords has issued a reasoned opinion on an EU proposal, under new powers conferred to EU national parliaments by the Treaty of Lisbon.