Talk:European Parliament

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

European Parliament is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 6, 2007.

	Article milestones

Date

Process

Result

March 13, 2006

Good article nominee

Listed

December 18, 2006

Good article reassessment

Delisted

June 16, 2007

Good article nominee

Listed

July 16, 2007

Featured article candidate

Promoted

Current Status: Featured article

	This article is part of WikiProject European Union, an attempt to co-ordinate articles relating to the European Union on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
FA	This article has been rated as FA-Class on the quality scale.
Top	This article has been rated as top-importance on the importance scale.

There is a request, submitted by - J Logan ^t:, for an audio version of this article to be created.

See WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia for further information.

The rationale behind the request is: "Important FA article, accessible information needed on such articles".

This Socsci article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. It has been rated FA-Class on the assessment scale (comments).

1 (old comments)
2 Initiating legislation
3 Constituencies Project
4 Scope
5 Salary
6 Minimum and Maximum number of seats
7 Good Article
8 GA Re-Review and In-line citations
9 Issues with the article
10 Successful good article nomination
11 Copyedit notes and questions
12 Inaccurate article
13 Merge from Apportionment in the European Parliament
14 Budget section

[edit] (old comments)

Did someone vandalize this page? When I viewed it it said "MOOOOOO." So I reverted it to the last edition before that.

I am deleting my own previous suggestion for improvement. Why? I was an idiot and did not observe that the suggestion has already been implemented! Cheers.

I was under the impression the EU parliament had little actual legislative power. Can anybody provide an authoritative reference one way or the other? - Khendon

See the http://europa.eu.int/abc/index3_en.htm for details. -- till we *) 22:53, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

The Parliament's legislative powers have been gradually increased since the EU's inception, from negligible to considerable. These days, it is the second chamber of what is basically a bicameral legislature together with the Council of Ministers. The Parliament cannot initiate legislation but it can accept (adopt), amend or reject legislation in tandem with the Council. In most areas of policy it has equal legislative power; very few areas now remain where it can only advise. See [1] for a detailed discussion. Toby 09:19, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, how about we include what the parliament actually does, apart from begging not to go to strasbourg every month? CJWilly

Another thing: the note about the largest elections -- I've read the "international simultaneous", but aren't the Indian congress elections (which aren't international, but at least simultaneous) a bit bigger? I'm not sure how many of the 1000 mio people there are allowed to vote, but India is praising itself as the biggest democracy. -- till we *) 22:53, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, i'll amend this - "largest transnational elections" is clearer. Toby 09:19, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Initiating legislation

Sobolewski added the following (actually it was already there, but (s)he rightly highlighted it):

The fact that the European Parliament cannot itself initiate legislation makes it different from most national "parliaments".

It's true that the EP can't initiate legislation, but I would query whether that's unusual among parliaments in general. It's my understanding that most parliaments have little or no power to do so. For instance, the UK Parliament hardly ever initiates legislation, as (to my knowledge) the only way it can do that is through a Private Members' Bill; government support is almost always needed. I suspect this is true of most parliamentary assemblies around the world, though I'm no expert on foreign systems. That would make the European Parliament quite similar to other parliaments in that respect. What do other contributors think? Wombat 20:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suppose this comes down to the definition of what it means for a "Parliament" to "initiate" legislation. It would be my understanding that even though 99% of bills in a Westminister-system Parliament are "Government Bills," the act of initiation is still a function of the legislative branch— if, say, a minister had been appointed from outside Parliament, the act of introducing legislation would still have to be done by a parliamentary secretary or somesuch. -The Tom 00:16, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure I agree. The act of adopting that legislation would be down to the legislature, but the initiative, drafting and timetabling is down to the executive, i.e. the government. They can also decide if and when they want to present or withdraw the bill. In other words, the UK Parliament can call for new proposals, but it can't in general require the government to bring them forward, nor can it decide what proposals it wants to consider. That, to my mind, is the exact analogy of the situation in the EU, where the Commission drafts and presents proposals, while Parliament (and Council) amend and adopt or reject them. Wombat 07:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

well, either "initiate" means "conception, drafting and timetabling" or it means "introduce." By choosing your definition you choose your answer. ;) -The Tom 01:26, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agreed - but my point is this: whichever definition you choose, the UK Parliament (and other Westminster-system parliaments) has the same power to 'initiate' as does the European Parliament. Therefore, whichever definition you choose, the fact remains that the statement "The fact that the European Parliament cannot itself initiate legislation makes it different from most national "parliaments" is false. Wombat 16:41, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've changed the wording to "makes it different from most national legislative assemblies". This is for a few reasons but most important is that the EP differs in this way from all legislatures, not just "parliaments" (if by that we mean a particular kind of legislature).

On the issue under dispute as I understand it houses of legislatures in almost all countries have the right to initiate legislation. The case can be made that in most country's that follow the parliamentary system this right has been rendered meaningless by the dominance of the executive over the legislature but what matters here is the formal procedure. We say most houses of parliament can iniate legislation because:

In some systems the cabinet or president has the right to introduce bills themselves, acting in their capacity as president or cabinet. However in many systems (including, I think, the UK) "government bills", even though drafted and endorsed by the executive, are introduced by ministers acting in their capacity as members of parliament.
Almost every system allows for private members bills. In a parliamentary system the executive may have the ability in practice to decide which bills get debated and to vote down those it dissaproves of but it only has this power because it commands the loyalty of a majority of members. It is a majority of members of parliament, not the executive, who vote down bills.

In a presidential system the right to iniate legislation is not merely a formality but matters a great deal. The EP is closest to a legislative assembly under a presidential system (it is not dominated by the executive) so the right to intiate laws would represent a significant increase in its powers.

I think part of the confusion is the way the word "government" is used in some countries such as the UK. In the UK the "government" can refer to the executive but also to the majority group of MPs who voted in the executive. So to say a bill was "introduced by the government" doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't initiated by a house of a legislature. Iota 20:40, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that's interesting. Can I just summarise your point to make sure I understand it? Westminster(-type systems) can initiate legislation, strictly speaking, but the fact that they're dominated by a government majority makes that power a bit of a formality. But the EP has no inbuilt majority, so for it, the ability to initiate legislation would be far more significant.

It's a fair point. I suppose the detail of this discussion is too complex to include in the article - which is a shame, because the simple statement as it stands, that the EP can't initiate legislation and other parliaments can, gives a rather simplistic view. It implies an outright weakness when the reality is much more subtle.

Never mind - I suppose Wikipedia is an encyclopedia at the end of the day, not a treatise on political theory. The text is fine as it stands. Thanks. :o) Wombat 08:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This discussion is getting close to the uniqueness of the EP. In all democracies the parliament can fix anything. The UK House of Commons has rules about initiating legislation, including a few private members bills and oportunities to the opposing parties. Any one of those bills could rewrite the HoC rules, they don't because a two party system provides elected tyrany. I believe the pr houses are more flexible.

The EP is unique because it is not supreme. Regnim 15:31, 19 Feb 2006

Surely no legislature can initiate legislation: a single MP doesn't represent the whole legislature when introducing legislation. For the whole legislature to be able to do that, a majority would spontaneously have to propose exactly the same text.

Surely the point is that no-one within the EP can initiate legislation, only the Commission, whereas in other systems members of the executive are drawn from the legislature?

[edit] Constituencies Project

I think we should have some information on European Parliamentary Constituencies.

Belgium, Ireland, Italy also use consitiuencies, information is here: European Parliament election, 2004 (Italy), European Parliament election, 2004 (Ireland), European Parliament election, 2004 (Belgium). Consituency articles should be developed along a similar format to above.

For all other countries, the whole state is one electoral area it seems. But this needs to be said more clearly than now. It would also be nice to have a map of Europe showing consituencies. Seabhcán 11:31, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I've started this at European Parliamentary Constituencies Seabhcán 12:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

I have revised to from "the EP is unique in that ... " to

The European Parliament is directly elected by the people of the European Union and has some restricted legislative power

I justify this now. As was observed India has direct elections. The EU is a Union, just like the USA.

My view is that the EP legislative power is trivial, which contributors may think is good or bad. Certainly the EP has powers of oversight through its necessary approvals. I hope a text can be found that everyone will find acceptable.

Alan Firminger ( Regnim when we had to logon )

[edit] Salary

How much do these guys get paid, and what perks and priveleges come with membership? EikwaR 05:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minimum and Maximum number of seats

It was agreed that the maximum number of MEPs should be fixed at 750, with a minimum threshold of six per member state and no member state being allocated more than 96 seats

Why does Germany have more than 96 and Malta have less then 6 seats? Grioghair 10:15, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have two theories. The first is incorrect data (then, max=99; min=5), but maybe such limits were agreed upon the EU-27 parliament, that is, for the 2009 elections. Habbit 14:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The number of seats were set for 2009 onwards. Malta gets an extra seat in 3 years. Before that it was all by negotiation (I remember Malta was going to be allocated 3 seats before the negotiations). _└ ^VodkaJazz/_talk^┐ 16:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I had this same question... it would be good to add this information to the article (with sources). -- Joebeone (Talk) 15:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article

I'm passing this as a good article. There are some minor improvements (I think some more citations would be beneficial and the above inconsistancy needs ironing out) that could be done before FAC but it's good enough for GA. MGSpiller 23:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 23:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Issues with the article

I tripped over some internal inconsitencies when perusing this article, for example:

The lead states that the first direct election occured in 1979, while the "History" section makes a claim of 1981. Which is it?
Also, the lead says that the P-ment does not have codecision power with the Council, but later, in powers and functions, says it does? Again, something is unclear here.
The Locations section appears to violate neutrality conventions at wikipedia. It is also entirely unreferenced.

As a whole, the article could benefit from referencing. If we knew where all of this information comes from, it might be easier to resolve these issues. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 15:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It's 1971, I've fixed that. In regards to codecision, it does in some areas and not in others. Hence why the lead uses the proviso "full". On locations, well the first to segments are facts about the location, the third - well I don't think it strays too much, I think a million people could count as strong, not sure. It's hard to make a case against for the two seats from where I'm sitting so I'm not sure how else to put it in a small place, I think it is more a topic for the locations page where there is more room to discuss it. Most info can be found on the europarl.europa.eu webpage, probably hasn't been referenced as a lot is common knowledge. -JLogan 20:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Successful good article nomination

I am glad to say that this article which was nominated for good article status has succeeded. This is how the article, as of June 18, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

THIS IS A DREADFUL article. How anyone can think it is well-written or comprehensive or anything else is beyond me. I opened the article a few minutes ago, and immediately corrected 'statue' into 'statute'. I went on spotting errors, then opened this discussion page, to find it had once appeared as a Featured article. You're all barmy. Best Wishes Fairlightseven. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.207.242.250 (talk) 16:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

1. Well written?: The grammar is correct and the text is comprehensible by international users. It adheres to the Manual of Style. The English is clear and the style is concise. The introductory section gives a good overall view and the article's sections are properly separated and no section is longer than it should.

2. Factually accurate?: Many inline citations and references across the whole article, pointing to reliable sources (many references to institutional sites).

3. Broad in coverage?: The article is broad in coverage, without going off-topic. It addresses all the aspects related to the European Parliament institution.

4. Neutral point of view?: I don't see bias in the article. The subject is treated technically and all the possible different views on the subject are addressed.

5. Article stability? The article is stable with most of this month's edits accounted to a group of editors committed into fixing the problems that were found in the last peer review that delisted the article from GA. It did not change substantially in the last few months (except for the due changes) and there were few anonymous edits in the same period. No edit wars too.

6. Images?: Appropriate usage of images, all captioned. Many images are from the Photographic Service of the European Parliament, and therefore are copyright free. All the images are copyright tagged and have an acceptable copyright status.

If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to a GA review. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status. — giandrea 00:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedit notes and questions

I added some mandatory commas and the like, and fixed a couple of sentence fragments, but there is more to do. My ignorance of the topic is a two-edged sword: I can tell when something is not clear, but I can't with confidence fix it. I hope someone will address the following:

"The Parliament, together with the Council, form the highest legislative body within the Union.": "Parliament" is a singular subject, with "together with the council" being parenthetical, but Parliament can't form the body alone. I fixed this.

"This is only within the competencies of the European Community being limited to specific policy areas...": I need help here. Would someone please parse this for me? I can't make heads or tails of it.

"Although the European Parliament has legislative power that such bodies as those above do not possess...": I need help here, too. Above what? Where?

"The Parliament, like the other institutions, was not designed in its current form...": "Other institutions" has no antecedent. Perhaps "...like the other EU institutions...".

"One of the oldest common institutions...": In Europe? If so, say that.

"Even the Parliament's two seats...": What seats? I'm doing this on the fly and expect to find out later in the article, but right now this is incomprehensible.

"It served all three communities, while the Commission and Council has separate bodies for each.": What Commission? What Council? And they would "have" bodies unless they are a single organ called The Commission and Council.

"...Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Assembly...": I'm pretty sure that the second "Assembly" shouldn't be there.

"Veil was also the first female President of the Parliament.": This might sound picky, but isn't that rather sexist? She was the first president of any sex, and being first is sufficient distinction. Let her have that. I just sense a sort of cognitive feedback loop here.

"...incentives for the secession of Iranian nuclear development...": Surely, "cessation."

"...Council can overrule the Parliament if it is unanimous along with the Consultation, which require just consultation of the Parliament...": I find "unanimous along with the Consultation" mystifying, and I can't tell what is supposed to be the subject of "require".

"The Parliament also has the power to censure the Commission, as a body, once they are in power with a two-thirds majority.": They are in power with a majority? Should this be "once they are in power, with..."?

Boy, that's a nice graph.

"...when a member joins mid-term, they will hold by-elections...": Who are they? Perhaps, "when a member joins mid-term, that state will hold by-elections..."? Milkbreath 03:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your work here! On your points, I've looked through and I've made some changes, I hope things are clearer, if not I'll see what I can do. I'm sure User:Ssolbergj will be happy to know his graph work is appreciated! Very good points though, thanks again for the copyedit. - J Logan ^t: 17:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inaccurate article

This article contains several revealing (deliberate?) mistakes.

First of all, the parliament is in no sense democratic. Since a EU demos (fortunately) does not exist, any EU institution, by definition cannot be democratic. Since this is an encyclopedia and we have to adhere to the definition of democracy all references to the EU being in any way democratic have to be removed from all EU articles. I would volunteer to do that as I personally despise the Fourth Reich (EU). I want our national democracy back.

Furthermore, how is the EU parliament a real parliament? It cannot initiate or impose a legislative agenda, it cannot form a government from its ranks. It cannot do anything by itself (except to dismiss a Commission as a whole). I believe that Advisory Council might be a better title for it. And before anyone mentions it, the mere fact that there are 'elections' for this 'parliament' does not make it democratic either.

The whole article itself is full of the standard EU propaganda (which as usual does not reflect reality wholly.) --81.68.98.95 18:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Article titles are taken from the real situation, the institution is called the European Parliament and so the article is called that. unsurprisingly and i'm sure everyone would agree that it isn't up to wikipedia users to decide article titles based on their own opinions. Mad onion 20:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That's a lot more polite than I could have managed Mad Onion. Marcus22 21:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Where are these references to the EU being democratic? Brutannica 21:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Read any official source or respectable academic writing. We also have this thing called logic to go on as well. Not even groups like UKIP try to say the Parliament isn't democratic, the very fact they were elected into it buggers that. Anyway, it is clear this is not a serious attempt to improve the article, just more POV from nationalists. I'll remind everyone this is for discussion article improvement, not about personal rants from Sun and Daily Mail readers. - J Logan ^t: 14:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

And to add to JLogan's reply to the comment, "demos" is Ancient greek for people, and it's a bit ridiculous to say that those electing MEPs are in any way not people. Maybe the above person is some kind of mongoloid troll, who hides in caves and makes the occasional swipe at passers by, because the whole world is, well, Greek to him. The trouble is, that some people come to Wikipedia just to criticise stuff rather than read and be informed. Well done on this article so far everyone! Wik idea 17:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh great, namecalling. Well I can do that too. Those who support the EU are treasonous quislings selling out their national democracy without any popular mandate to do so. Back in 1939-45 we also had many in Europe willing to sell their countries out to hand power to Berlin. Now its the same, except Berlin is now Brussels (albeit without the direct terror). Tell me, how is it different selling your country out now than it was then? Why should traitors not be dealt with like they were then, namely with summary execution? --81.68.98.95 21:49, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. And just a quick addition. The UK national democracy is hardly a gold standard I'd want to depend upon, especially given the attitude of recent governments. We are lumbered with a far worse democratic system which shows no signs of improvement and many of the problems with democracy and the EU stem from problems with the UK constitution and the lack of reform to cope with the modern world. Few words, Lords, Queen, Prerogative, Prime Minister, Presidential, WL Question, Spin, Iraq, DEFRA, FPTP, SOCA, Terrorism Act... Anyway, sorry just wanted to do the pot kettle black, I'll stop now - as I said, this is for the article. - J Logan ^t: 19:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Apportionment in the European Parliament

It has been suggested that Apportionment in the European Parliament be merged into this article.

Weak oppose. On balance, I think it is useful to have a separate article for more detail. Discussions about the system could also be included there. I think the subject should have its own sub-section here, with a reference to the "Main" article. On the other hand the data needs to be kept up to date, and at present it does not contain much additional information. --Boson 15:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

- Oppose, it would clutter the main article too much. Instead, I propose merging in the section History of the European Parliament#Growth in membership to help develop the article. - J Logan ^t: 21:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Budget section

How did the parliament's refusal to discharge the 1984 EC budget bring down the Santer commission in 1999 ? --Triwbe (talk) 16:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

See also ebooksgratis.com: no banners, no cookies, totally FREE.