The importance of the European Parliament for EU citizens

European elections will be held in the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU) between 4 and 7 June 2009. The 736 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will be elected by proportional representation to represent some 500 million European citizens.

In their great majority citizens ignore the functions of the European Parliament and hence its importance for their professional and daily lives. This ignorance is due to deficient information of the general public by the European institutions [see sections 10.1.1 and 10.1.2], which should be enhanced by a vigorous common policy of the Community and the Member States [see section 10.1.3]. In what follows we give only some examples of measures taken by the European Parliament in co-decision with the Council, which affect the professional and everyday lives of people living in the European Union. Many other examples can be found by browsing through the contents of Europedia.

Measures affecting professional lives

The most important legal measure in this area is the directive establishing the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to work and reside freely within the territory of the Member States. This right is important for both the professional and the everyday lives of the citizens of the Union; and the European Parliament has a main say as to how it is implemented in the Member States. It concerns both salaried and self-employed persons, their spouses, children and other members of their families, including the registered partner if the legislation of the host Member State treats registered partnership as equivalent to marriage [Directive 2004/38].

The European Parliament is also the co-author of such important directives as those:

·         implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin in different areas such as employment, education, social security, health care and access to goods and services [Directive 2000/43];

·         the recognition of professional qualifications, including those belonging to the liberal professions, wishing to pursue a regulated profession in a Member State other than that in which they obtained their professional qualifications, on either a self-employed or employed basis [Directive 2005/36 consolidated version 01.01.2007];

·         the ''services directive'', which establishes a general legal framework facilitating the exercise of the freedom of establishment for service providers and the free movement of services, while maintaining a high quality of services [Directive 2006/123].

·         concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time covering more particularly: the maximum weekly working time (48 hours), the minimum daily rest period (11 uninterrupted hours), the minimum period of paid leave (4 weeks), conditions relating to night work and the maximum period of such work (8 hours), and breaks in the event of prolonged periods of work [Directive 2003/88];

·         the implementation of the principle of equal treatment of men and women in matters of employment and occupation, prohibiting any indirect discrimination, i.e. the ways in which women are disadvantaged in relation to men in spite of apparently equal treatment, viz.: individual or collective contracts concerning employment and working conditions [Directive 2006/54]; and

·         the health and safety protection of women workers who are pregnant, have just given birth or are breast-feeding [Directive 92/85 and Directive 2007/30].

Measures affecting everyday lives

The European Parliament has co-responsibility for important measures concerning the protection of consumers in the European Union, such as:

·         the Directive on general product safety, which aims to ensure that all products placed on the European market are safe for the consumers [Directive 2001/95];

·         the Directive on toy safety, which sets the basic safety requirements that must be met by all toys manufactured in the Community or imported from third countries [Directive 88/378, consolidated version 02.08.1993, last amended by Directive 2008/112];

·         the Directive on liability for defective products, which seeks to ensure a high level of consumer protection against damage caused to health or property by a defective product [Directive 85/374, consolidated version 04.06.1999];

·         the legislation governing food hygiene [Regulation 852/2004], health issues related to the marketing of products of animal origin [Directive 2004/41] and the organisation of official controls on such products [Regulation 854/2004, consolidated version 01.01.2007];

·         the Directives in the particularly sensitive areas of food additives, colourings and sweeteners [Directives 94/34, 94/35 consolidated version 15.08.2006 and 94/36];

·         the Directive on package travel, including package holidays and package tours, which protects millions of tourists against possible corrupt practices by the organisers of these popular holidays [Directive 90/314];

·         the Directive laying down minimum consumer protection rules concerning distance contracts regardless of the technology used (e.g. mail-order, telephone, fax, computer, television, etc.) and regardless of the product or service marketed [Directive 97/7, consolidated version 25.12.2007].

The European Parliament plays also a major role in the protection of the European environment. The following are some examples of measures it has adopted in codecision with the Council.

·         The directive establishing a framework of environmental liability which aims at preventing and/or remedying of environmental damage to water resources, soil, fauna, flora and natural habitats and at making the polluters pay whenever damage cannot be avoided [Directive 2004/35, consolidated version 01.05.2006].

·         The directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law, which enjoins the Member States to provide effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties in their national legislation as regards serious infringements of Community law on the protection of the environment [Directive 2008/99].

·         The "framework Directive" for Community waste policy, which obliges the Member States to take measures to ensure that waste is eliminated without endangering human health and without damaging the environment, and in particular without giving rise to risk to water, air or soil, fauna or flora, without causing discomfort through noise or smell and without affecting areas or landscapes [Directive 2008/98].

·         The so-called "Marine Strategy Framework Directive", which established a framework within which Member States must take the necessary measures to achieve or maintain good environmental status in the marine environment by the year 2020 at the latest [Directive 2008/56].

·         The Directive 2001/77, which requires all Member States to set national indicative targets for the consumption of electricity produced from renewable sources (wind, solar, geothermal, wave, tidal, hydropower, biomass, landfill gas, sewage treatment plant gas and biogases).

·         The Directive 2003/30, which aims at promoting the use of biofuels or other renewable fuels to replace diesel or petrol for transport purposes in each Member State.

The Treaty of Lisbon and the European Parliament

The Treaty of Lisbon enhances significantly the functions of the European Parliament. According to it, the Parliament shall, jointly with the Council, exercise legislative and budgetary functions (Article 9 A). The new Treaty extends the codecision procedure, renamed "ordinary legislative procedure", to a large number of fields, with the notable exception of the common foreign and security policy. The Parliament thus will have the functions of a House of Representatives, representing the citizens of the Union, while the Council will play the role of a Senate, representing the governments of the Member States. Concerning the budget of the Union, the Treaty of Lisbon abolishes the distinction between ''compulsory'' expenditure and ''non-compulsory'' expenditure and therefore the Parliament exercises the same budgetary functions as the Council [see section 3.4]. The request for accession of new Member States shall be subject to the consent of the European Parliament, which may thus turn down a candidate, even despite the unanimous approval of the governments of the Member States.

The Treaty of Lisbon reinforces the functions of political control of the Parliament vis-à-vis the Commission. It shall elect the President of the Commission, proposed by the European Council. The Parliament may turn down the candidate proposed by the European Council and force it to propose another personality for President of the Commission. The President, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the other members of the Commission will be subject as a body to a vote of consent by the European Parliament (Article 9 D), which means that the Parliament may reject the composition of the Commission arranged by its President and force him or her to review it. With a motion of censure, carried by a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, representing a majority of its component members, the European Parliament might force the members of the Commission to resign as a body (Article 9 D.8). These procedures will clearly highlight the responsibility of the Commission vis-à-vis the Parliament. They will also make the functions of the European Parliament resemble those of a national parliament.

Conclusions

The Community method implies a decision-making process entailing: (a) a single and supranational source of the right of initiative, the European Commission; (b) usually co-decision of the European Parliament with the Council, deciding by qualified majority; and (c) control of the decisions by a supranational judicial authority, the European Court of Justice. The eurosceptic rhetoric about the "decisions taken by the technocrats of Brussels" (meaning the Commission) is maliciously erroneous. The fact is that the "Eurocrats" of Brussels (the Commission), assisted by national technocrats (scientific and administrative committees), only propose the Community measures; but it is the political institutions representing the democratically elected governments (the Council of Ministers) and the citizens of the Member States (the European Parliament) that take the decisions.

The legislative and control powers of the European Parliament have greatly increased since the early days of European integration when it had a purely consultative role in the legislative process and when, as a consequence, the democratic deficit at European level was substantially greater than that at the national level. Nowadays, the members of the European Parliament are elected directly every five years, in June, by the citizens of the Union. As we have seen above, they take, jointly with the Ministers of the Member States, decisions which are often and progressively more important for the citizens, than the decisions taken by national parliaments. Very often, indeed, the latter transpose into the national legislation, directives that are taken in Brussels. Moreover, these directives are constantly amended to follow technical and social progress and needs. Through its amendments to the proposals of the Commission, the Parliament increasingly affects the content of the directives to be taken or to be amended and, hence, the professional and everyday lives of the citizens of the Union.

Furthermore, the Parliament has a Committee on Petitions which examines the complaints of citizens, on matters relating e.g. to social security, the recognition of professional qualifications or environment protection [Parliament Resolution]. If the complaint concerns instances of mismanagement in the activities of the Community institutions or bodies, the citizen may address himself or herself to the Ombudsman appointed by the European Parliament.

All this is to say that citizens should be interested in the elections of the members of the European Parliament. If they do not bother to vote in European elections, they should not complain about the democratic deficit. This would be due to their indifference and not to a deficiency of the European institutions.

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