What is European Parliament?
European Parliament (EP) constitutes of 8 political groups from the representatives of 28 EU Member States. EP adopts 24 languages as their official languages for conference and other events.
The EP has 3 main roles:
Legislative
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Passing EU laws, together with the Council of the EU, based on European Commissionproposals
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Deciding on international agreements
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Deciding on enlargements
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Reviewing the Commission's work programme and asking it to propose legislation
Supervisory
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Democratic scrutiny of all EU institutions
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Electing the Commission President and approving the Commission as a body. Possibility of voting a motion of censure, obliging the Commission to resign
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Granting discharge, i.e. approving the way EU budgets have been spent
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Examining citizens' petitions and setting up inquiries
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Discussing monetary policy with the European Central Bank
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Questioning Commission and Council
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Election observations
Budgetary
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Establishing the EU budget, together with the Council
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Approving the EU's long-term budget, the "Multiannual Financial Framework"
What do the EP members do?
The MEPs represent the benefits of people in the EU. Most of the member states of the European Union elect their MEPs with a single constituency covering the entire state, using party-list proportional representation. There is however a great variety of electoral procedures: some countries use the highest averages method of proportional representation, some use the largest remainder method, some open lists and others closed. In addition, the method of calculating the quota and the election threshold vary from country to country.
When is the next EP election?
The next EP election will be held in the third week of May 2019. The next EP election will be within 27 European Member States since the UK will leave the bloc. The seats in EPs left by UK will either be redistributed to other Member States or saved for new members to join the EU in the future.
