How does the European Parliament work?

September 2, 2018 1:25 PM

I would like to know how the European Parliament (and related institutions, like the European Commission) work, on a day-to-day level, not just high-level descriptions of official bodies and their functions. Does anyone report on this?

I have tons of questions, including:

How does a bill get proposed and become a law (or "passed", maybe they don't have the power to make "laws")? Are there different factions? What are the factors that lead to seemingly smart (GDPR) and stupid (EU Copyright Directive) legislation coming out of the same body? What does a career in the European Parliament look like? What opportunities are there for bribery, graft, and other corruption?

Most of the resources I can find are sort of dry and inadequate -- they just give you the names and formal responsibilities of all the dozens and dozens of bodies, meetings, and committees, without describing how things actually get done.

Is there a good book to read, or a newspaper that reports particularly well on the goings-on of legislative activity?

posted by vogon_poet to Law & Government (2 answers total)

I do a brief overview of this for my UGs and take quite a bit from this book, you can read the key bits on line and that URL should even mark the bit to go to, its about page 125.

Some basic points:
Legislation can be proposed by the European Commission, national governments, MEPs, etc.

The Bill is put together by the Commission, then reviewed by the Economic and Social Committee.

If approved it goes to the European Parliament who can send it back for reconsideration and revision or approve it.

Final approval must be made by the Council of Ministers.

This is a generalisation, there are actually multiple stages as you will see in the handy flow diagram in that book.
posted by biffa at 1:58 PM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

For the basics on how the European Parliament works: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en
And this video: https://www.europarltv.europa.eu/programme/others/how-it-works-the-european-parliament

Major online media reporting on EU affairs – all trustworthy
• https://www.euractiv.com/
• https://www.politico.eu/
• https://euobserver.com/

if you can somehow get hold of it I recommend this film, it documents the battle for GDPR.
Finally, you might be interested in following EDRI (European Digital Rights ): as part of their advocacy work they do pretty good briefs.
posted by bluedora at 11:19 PM on September 2, 2018 [3 favorites]