Kerry, Liz and Charlotte

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European Parliament
Kerry, Liz and Charlotte
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What is the European Parliament?

• The European Parliament is the only supranational
  institution whose members are elected directly
  through universal suffrage
• The MEPs who sit in the parliament represent the
  citizens of all the member states
• Elections for the European Parliament occur every
  5 years

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• World leaders flock to address the European
  Parliament, a truly international forum
• Parliament has become a focus for presenting
  the internal and external activities of the Union
• This means that Members of Parliament and,
  through them, the citizens can be involved in
  marking out their political vision for Europe

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Work really closely
Make laws
voters
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FUNCTIONS AND POWERS

• The European Parliament, like the House of
  Commons, is an elected body who represents its
  electorate by voting on proposed legislation that
  will affect them.
• MEPs from parliamentary committees draw up
  reports on proposals put forward by the EU
  commission, the parliamentary committee then
  takes a vote and can make amendments, this
  process is repeated until agreement is reached
  with the council.
• In special legislative procedures, Parliament
  only has a consultative role, for instance tax,
  industry and agriculture.
• In ordinary procedure the EU Parliament is on an
  equal footing with the Council

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Co Decision

• Codecision gives the European Parliament and the
  Council of the European Union equal authority on
  issues such as transport, the environment and
  consumer protection.
• Together the European Parliament and the council
  adopt 2/3 of European Laws
• Proposed Bills are examined through readings
• If parliament and Council cannot agree after two
  readings the proposal is put to a Conciliation
  Committee.
• Once Agreement is reached, the text agreed upon
  goes to the Parliament and the Council for a
  third reading, so that they can finally adopt it
  as a legislative text.
• Both institutions must agree if the text is to be
  adopted as a law.
• Even if a joint text is agreed by the
  Conciliation Committee, Parliament can still
  reject the proposed law by an absolute majority
  of its members.

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Budget

• Parliament also has an influence over the annual
  budget for the European Union
• When the budget is proposed, parliament can make
  amendments at the first reading
• And then rejects or adopts the amended proposal
  at the second reading
• The President of the European Parliament who
  finally adopts the budget.

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Key Responsibilities

• Parliament gives its assent to the accession of
  new EU Member States
• It is consulted on international agreements
  concerning foreign affairs
• e.g trade cooperation agreements between the
  Union and non-member countries
• It plays an active role discussing Globalisation
• Monitors the work done by the World Trade
  Organisation
• Gives consent to agreement between EU and WTO
• Parliament stresses that the specific problems
  encountered by developing countries must be taken
  into account.

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Human Rights

• Ever year the European Parliament reports on
  human rights in countries inside outside the
  European Union.
• The EU can put pressure on a country to release
  political prisoners or subscribe to human rights
  agreements by refusing to make agreements with
  the country until these measures have been taken.
  
• The European Parliament holds regular debates on
  cases of breaches of human rights, democracy and
  the rule of law.
• It has adopted a host of resolutions condemning
  governments that breach human rights. This allows
  MEPs and members of the public to be made aware
  of breaches in certain countries.

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Exercising Control

• The European Parliament also has the power to set
  up a committee to look into violations or wrong
  application of Community law by Member States.
• The Parliament also has powers of control in the
  economic and monetary domain.
• The President, the Vice-President and the
  Executive Board of the European Central Bank
  cannot be appointed until Parliament has given
  its assent.
• The President of the ECB presents its annual
  report to the European Parliament in plenary
  session.
• Every European citizen has the right to petition
  Parliament to ask for problems to be remedied in
  areas within the European Union.
• Parliament has an appointed Ombudsman, who deals
  with complaints by individuals and aims to reach
  an amicable solution.

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How democratic is the European Parliament?

• The European Parliament represents around 450
  million citizens of the European Union.
• It is the only directly elected institution of
  the EU.
• Member states are free to choose how MEPs are
  elected, providing
• The system is a form of PR, either using the list
  or STV system.
• The UK uses the closed list system, closed
  because the ballot paper contains a list of
  political parties not their candidates, in which
  seats are allocated to candidates proportionally
  according to the amount of votes a party
  receives. This produces multi-member
  constituencies, which increases democracy as more
  constituents can be accurately represented.
  Systems of proportionality such as this are more
  democratic than other systems, as parties are
  represented more fairly.

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• The electoral area may be subdivided if this will
  not generally affect the proportional nature of
  the voting system wont be affected.
• Any election threshold on the national level must
  not exceed five percent. This is not as
  democratic as it could be, but does prevent the
  election of extremist parties as well as the
  ruling party setting a high election threshold.
• The number of seats allocated to each member
  state are based on a system of degressive
  proportionality, so that, although country size
  is taken into account, smaller states have more
  MEPs proportionally compared to larger states.

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This is the Current Allocation of Seats
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European Parliament

• Developments

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European Parliament

• First established in 1967, members were chosen by
  the national parliaments.
• Since 1979 direct elections have taken place
  every 5 years, with the citizens of each member
  state voting for a candidate of their choice.
• The process is made more democratic as all
  countries must abide by the same rules of
  proportional representation.

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European ParliamentEnlargement

• Before enlargement on 1 May 2004 the parliament
  had 626 seats. The new parliament elected in June
  2004 has 732, and it will grow again when
  Bulgaria and Romania join, possibly in 2007.
• The number of seats each member state has, has
  also decreased slightly, with the addition of 10
  new countries.

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European ParliamentParties

• Since 1979, the number of political parties
  represented in the European Parliament ahs
  increased.
• In 1979, there were only 7 parties, however in
  2004, this number had increased to 11.

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European ParliamentPowers

• Since it was established, the Parliaments powers
  have been steadily increasing, with a need for
  member states to adopt EU legislation, most of
  which is amended and adopted by the Parliament.
• The Parliament can now work in cohesion with
  other bodies to implement law. The Co-decision
  act of the Maastricht Treaty enabled the European
  Parliament to veto EU legislation.