EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT:ARRIVING AT a plenary session of the European Parliament for the first time can be a bewildering experience, writes JAMIE SMYTH, European Correspondent
MEPs scurry between committees, plenary votes and political group meetings, hardly finding the time for a cup of coffee.
If they are lucky they can secure a slot for a speech, which can last just a minute, or ask questions to a stream of European commissioners and national politicians that attend the sessions.
But does all this activity achieve anything? Do our MEPs make a difference?
Regulations to cut mobile phone roaming charges, force airlines to provide transparent pricing information on their websites and make the registration of 30,000 chemical substances obligatory in Europe are some of the 1,000 legislative acts passed by the parliament in the past five years.
“We have far more say than media commentators or much of the public think we do. About 80 per cent of European legislation is now passed via co-decision, which means we have an equal say with member states,” says Fine Gael MEP Avril Doyle.
Co-decision describes the process that enables the 785 MEPs in the European Parliament to jointly decide laws with national ministers, who sit at the Council of Ministers. It was introduced in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty, and has been extended with every subsequent EU treaty.
The policy areas MEPs can legislate on include environment; consumer rights; internal market; and social inclusion.
And if the Lisbon Treaty enters into force they will extend their reach to cover 90-95 per cent of policy areas, including the sensitive areas of justice and home affairs.
Yet despite this ability to influence the shape of EU law, the parliament still struggles to make itself relevant to the public. Turnout has fallen at every European election since the first directly-elected parliament sat in 1979. Analysts suspect turnout could fall to 40 per cent this June.
“It takes time for people to realise the parliament’s powers have increased considerably since 1979 when the first direct elections took place. It also struggles because people are not clear what laws come from Europe because they are generally implemented by national governments years later,” says Julia De Clerk-Sachsse, analyst at the Centre for European Policy Studies.
Parliament can be a difficult institution to cover. MEPs sit in plenary sessions in Brussels and Strasbourg, making travel costly for journalists.
The legislative process is also complicated, passing through several stages as it moves from initiation at the European Commission and then back and forth between MEPs and national ministers attending the Council of Ministers.
Yet two events during the current parliamentary term have graphically illustrated that the parliament can no longer be dismissed as “Eurodisney for MEPs”.
The first was the parliament’s success in forcing the withdrawal of Italy’s choice for EU commissioner Rocco Buttiglione. Buttiglione, due to become justice commissioner, told MEPs at his parliamentary hearing that “homosexuality is a sin”. This prompted MEPs to threaten to reject the entire commission. Italy was forced to withdraw Buttiglione.
The second occasion when the parliament proved itself a key player was the debate on the services directive. This piece of EU legislation fell under the ambit of EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy, who bowed to MEPs’ demands to remove the “country-of-origin principle”.
This principle contained in the original commission proposal would have enabled workers from one EU state to travel to another to provide services but continue receiving the pay and conditions applicable in their home country.
MEPs also campaign on topics and highlight their constituents’ problems on the European stage.
Munster MEP Kathy Sinnott was instrumental in helping Irish people bring their cases to the parliament’s petitions committee, which highlights occasions when EU states may be neglecting citizens’ rights. Jim Higgins and Proinsias De Rossa also asked hundreds of parliamentary questions.
A highlight of the 2004-2009 parliament was the high-profile inquiry into CIA renditions flights, which strongly criticised Ireland for allowing CIA flights to land at Shannon. MEPs probably played a role in helping to change Government policy to enable Garda searches of aircraft.
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