• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• EP Civil liberties committee

EP Civil liberties committee

01 September 1992

In the wake of the Maastricht Treaty discussions in December 1991 the European Parliament (EP) decided to set up a new Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs (previously these matters had been dealt with by the Legal Affairs & Citizens Rights committee). The Chair of the Committee is Amdee Turner, Conservative UK, and there are 31 Members of the EP (MEPs) on the Committee plus substitute members who often attend meetings. It held its first meeting on 16 January 1992.

The main business of the new Committee has been to appoint a number of rapporteurs, MEPs taking the lead in preparing reports and inviting outside people to give evidence. The rapporteurs appointed so far include: immigration (Mathilde van den Brink, Socialist, Netherlands); right of asylum (Patrick Cooney, Fine Gael, Ireland); freedom of movement for persons (Konstantinos Tsimas, Socialist, Greece); entry into force of the Schengen Agreement (Lode van Outrive, Socialist, Belgium); establishment of EUROPOL (Lode van Outrive); international terrorism (Heinke Salisch, Socialist, Germany); annual report on respect for human rights in the EC (Karel de Gucht, PVV, Belgium); social code for the treatment of prisoners (Claudia Roth, Green, Germany); immigrant workers (Dacia Valent, Communist Party, Italy; Djida Tazdait, Green, France).