Ms Iverna McGowan:

On the question about the response to general LGBTI issues, Amnesty International recently released public statements on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia regarding authorities tackling homophobic and transphobic hate crimes. To some extent the problems can be institutional in that even if they are protected by law there is not proper follow-up or there is impunity for crimes committed at the time.

At EU level Amnesty International is engaging with the European Commission progress reports and also the European Parliament progress reports on enlargement and insisting that LGBTI rights should be included in those.

Within the European Union we engage at EU level on legislation on hate crime. We are also due to have a regional briefing released in September or October on the thematic report on LGBTI issues.We also offer a gooddeal of support and are working with LGBTI prides. Members will be aware that Baltic Pride is coming from Vilnius and therefore in the context of the Lithuanian Presidency, we will be combining those two efforts and working in concrete terms on that.

On the more technical questions, we could send a follow-up submission to the committee. On some of the issues relevant to enlargement, we could forward those to the relevant people for the COSAC meeting.