Geopolitics Magazine March - April 2015 ( 8th Edition ) | Page 77

Geopolitics & Daily News Magazine

The European Parliament (EP) is elected every 5 years. Each Member State is represented on the basis
of its population but there is a minimum threshold in order to ensure an essence of equality (not less
than 6 Parliament Members) Germany has a relative majority within EP electing 96 MEPs out of 751.
Even though the MEPs are elected under a political party or as individuals in their home country, but
in Parliament are organized into seven different parliamentary groups, including thirty non-attached
members known as non-inscrits.
The European Parliament has some powers among them: the approval of the president of EU
Communion and the EU Commission as a whole (motion of confidence), has the power to reject the EU
Budget that is proposed by the Council (at these case a mediators talk is initiated in order for a
compromise to be reached), it has the power to examine the Commissioners and the Commission in
parliamentary sessions and along with the Council and/or the Commission, they issue the regulations
and the directives that govern the EU matters. With the set of six pack/two pack legislation, EU
Parliament took greater power on controlling the action of EU Institutions in times of necessity.
Furthermore, according to Lisbon Treaty (still not applicable) the EU parliament has close cooperation
with the national Parliaments of each Member State.
Not elected but powerful – the European Institutions and Directorate-General (DGs)
On top of EU institutions (for the purposes of these article) we may find the European Statistics Agency
(Eurostat) Eurostat which is a Directore-General (DG) of the European Commission located in
Luxembourg. Its main responsibilities are to provide statistical information to the institutions of the
European Union and to promote the harmonization of statistical methods across the member states
and candidate countries for accession as well as EFTA countries. The national statistical institutions
which actively cooperate with Eurostat are summarized under the concept of the European Statistical
Sys FV