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The European Parliament

Since 1979, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been directly elected for fixed terms of five years. The total membership is 751, of whom 73 represent UK constituencies (60 in England, 6 in Scotland, 4 in Wales and 3 in Northern Ireland). Following the 2014 elections, the largest party in the parliament was the European People’s Party with 221 seats, closely followed by the Socialists and Democrats with 191. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe includes the sole British Liberal Democrat MEP. The UK Independence Party, UKIP, has 24 MEPs and is affiliated to the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group, which has 48 seats in the parliament. Labour’s 20 MEPs sit with the Socialists and Democrats Group, and the Conservative party’s 19 MEPs are part of the European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group. Other United Kingdom MEPs are Green (3), SNP (2), Liberal Democrat (1) Plaid Cymru (1), Sinn F6in (1), Democratic Unionist (1), and Ulster Unionist (1).

Most business in European Parliament plenary sessions originates from the 20 permanent committees and their sub-committees, which carry out most of the legislative scrutiny. Somewhat surprisingly, the European Parliament continues to sit both in Strasbourg, for a week of plenary sittings each month, and in Brussels, for a number of two-day plenaries and the majority of committee meetings.

The European Parliament employs some 6,000 people. The budget for 2014 was ?1.4 billion, including MEP’s salaries. Exact comparisons are difficult but, in broad cash terms, the European Parliament costs well over twice as much as the Westminster Parliament.

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The European Parliament: Stances on World Peace
There are different roles of EP. Major roles of EP are as follows: First it passes the laws: The most common practice of EP is adopting and passing the EU legislation that is called “co-decision”. This method takes place at the EP with the collaboration of the Council of EU on equal basis. EP is...
(The European Union: On the Verge of Global Political Leadership)
The European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) together with the Council is the legislator of the European Union. Legislation is enacted jointly by these two institutions primarily within the framework of the ordinary legislative procedure (discussed later). The EP has developed from a more or less advisory organ to gain...
(EU environmental law and policy)
Parliamentary Rules of Procedure: The Case of the European Parliament
Rules of Parliamentary Procedure as Documents in Debates All parliaments have their own rules of procedure, either in the sense of written reglements or Geschdftsordnungen as in the Francophone or Germanic parliaments, or in the combination of conventions, precedents and written...
(Debates, Rhetoric and Political Action: Practices of Textual Interpretation and Analysis)
Voting in the European Parliament
As mentioned above, there are essentially three different forms of voting in the EP. Most of the time, members vote by a simple show of hands, as this is the quickest way and there are frequently more than a hundred individual votes on legislative and non-legislative texts, amendments, and resolutions...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
A Bias in European Parliament Roll-Call Votes?
The potential selection bias in EP RCVs has long been neglected. Carrubba et al. (2006) were the first to address it by analyzing the whole sample of votes taken in the EP between July 1999 and 2000. They found differences between party groups concerning their RCV requests, with the EPP and the Greens...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Voting Unity Between Ministers and Members of the European Parliament
Within European nation states, parties are the main actors in determining decision-making. Legislators almost always vote along partisan lines. Party-internal voting unity is essential for signaling a clear position to voters and effectively shaping decision-making (Carey 2007). This does not only apply...
(Voting Unity of National Parties in Bicameral EU Decision-Making: Speaking with One Voice?)
Parliamentary Party Support for the European Union and the European Parliament
Chapter 3 put forward two options to approximate empirically whether the party composition of national parliaments tends towards intergovernmental or federal constitutional preferences. The more accurate yet empirically limited choice would be to focus on party support for the EP. A less accurate yet...
(Constitutional preferences and parliamentary reform: explaining national parliaments adaptation to European integration)
European Parliament
Petra Ahrens1 and Lise Roland sen Agustin The first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in 1979. However, its predecessor, the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, dates back to 1951. This body was part of the European Economic Community and the European Atomic...
(The Routledge Handbook of Gender and EU Politics)
Gendering the European Parliament
Research on the European Parliament is rich and diverse (e.g. Corbett et al 2016; Ripoil Servent 2018),but gender aspects have been largely disregarded in mainstream literature. Research specifically on gender and the European Parliament has focused on the ways in which the institutions and its main...
(The Routledge Handbook of Gender and EU Politics)