EU Parliament
- EU Parliament in Brussels (Photo: European Parliament)
The European Parliament is the assembly of the representatives of the close to 500 million Union citizens. Since 1979 they have been elected by direct universal voting every five years.
At the moment, the European Parliament has a total of 785 members distributed between Member States according to the sizes of their populations accordinbg to a principle of "degressive proportionality".
Notes
- The European Parliament considers the EU Commission's proposals and is associated with the Council in the law-making process, in some cases as co-legislator. Under this procedure it can propose to amend laws by an absolute majority of its members (393/785, 376/751 from 2009) and veto decisions.
- The European Parliament shares budgetary authority with the Council, and can therefore influence EU spending. The parliament must approve every budget; at the end of the procedure it does so by “adopting” the budget. It has the last say on non-compulsory expenditures.
- It exercises democratic supervision over the EU Commission. It approves the nomination of Commissioners, has the right to censure the EU Commission and grants discharge.
- It also exercises political supervision over all the institutions.
Future
The Lisbon Treaty will remove the distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory exdenditure, thus giving the European Parliament the influence on all budgetary categories.
The European Parliament will also have greater influence in a greater number of areas as the co-decision procedure will be applied in more areas - now called the "ordinary legislative procedure".
From 2009 the seats in the European Parliament will be distributed according to the formalised principle of "degressive proportionality" securing each member state at least 6 seats and max. 96 in a parliament of 751 members. The Lisbon Treaty will bring the number down to 751 from 2009 on.
Links
European Parliament website http://www.europarl.europa.eu/
