‘only a handful of article 192 requests have been passed to date’ (Nugent, 2006). The other way in which the European parliament can formally put forward legislation is to have reports that the parliament itself initiates. This means that the parliament can act as quite an effective legislative body with the power to put forward its own ideas. There is hpwever an issue with this power, while the parliament can put forward the legislation the, commission is under no obligation to accept it or act on it. Though the pressure put on the commission is a considerable amount.
The powers of the European parliament ‘have steadily, but slowly grown over the years’ (El-Agraa, 2001). An important change in legislative powers came with the Single European act this gave the European Parliament small but however very real place in the legislative process. What this meant was that there was the implementation of the co-operation procedure, which ‘requires two readings each by the council and parliament’ (El-Agraa, 2001) of economic and monetary decisions. The first reading means that the European council must come to a majority decision over what is to be done and inform the parliament of why this has been the decision and if so why any of parliament’s amendments have been overrules. If the parliament is not happy with this decision then it can ‘exert further pressure at its second reading by amending or rejecting the common position by absolute majority vote’ ( Nugent, 2001). While this is a quite considerable legislative power, it can be overruled by a majority vote at the council and so does not amount to a veto power. While this is true the fact still remains that the co-operation procedure does give quite a lot of legislative power to the European parliament as, a majority vote by the council to overrule the parliaments decision can be difficult to get. The European parliament as well is in effect acting as the voice of the people, this again puts considerable pressure on the commission to go along with the parliaments decision.
Another power that the European parliament possesses is that of the co-decision procedure this ‘requires agreement from both institutions, with a conciliation procedure to reconcile their views where necessary’( El-Agraa, 2001). The co-decision procedure is ‘based on the principle of parity and means that neither institution (European Parliament or Council) may adopt legislation without the other's assent.’ (Europa, 2006). The difference between this procedure and that of co-operation is that if the council and the parliament reach a majority decision at the first reading, then it can be passed at that time without having to have a second reading. If the council and the European parliament have still not reached a decision at the second reading,:
‘the proposal falls, if the parliament has rejected it by an absolute majority of its members and it is referred to a conciliation committee if the European Parliament has amended it by an absolute majority.’(Nugent, 2001)
In the situation where the conciliation committee agrees the legislation, it then has to again be put before Parliament and the council; however it is only parliament that needs the majority vote. This power of co-decision gives the European parliament
incredible affective legislative powers, as it has the power of veto over two legislative
proposals.
Another very important legislative procedure of the European community is that of assent. This is similar to that of the consultation procedure however parliament can not amend a piece of legislation it can only reject or accept a proposal, the decision is taken at a single reading as well as opposed to two separate readings.
The legislation decided to be put through each separate decision making process varies depending on which treaty articles the proposal is based. With regard to legislative votes 46% used the consultation procedure, 27% the co-operation procedure and 25% the co-decision procedure and 1% the assent procedure.(Noury and Noland, 2002). In order for the European parliament to have more effective legislative power, it is obviously in its own interests for the majority of legislation to go through the co-decision procedure. With this in mind the European parliament gained more legislative power, in the Amsterdam treaty where ‘a number of policy areas were upgraded from consultation to co-decision.’ (Nugent, 2006). This means greater power for the European parliament in terms of legislation, the power of veto over a number of areas does have a large effect and could mean the general opinion of the parliament as ineffective, is an outdated one.
The extent to which the European Parliament does have effective legislative power is very difficult to define. A lot of the lobbying and influence is done informally, not all of the Influence had is done in formal settings and the influence that the European parliament has over a certain number of issues could be far greater than originally thought. ‘The impact of the extension of the Parliaments powers has been considerable as committees have sought to exploit the formal and informal channels of influence to which they have recently gained access’ (Collins, Burns and Warleigh, 1998)
Other very important point is that influence over the legislative process does not just finish at blocking whole pieces of legislation from going through. ‘While only a handful of legislative procedures are blocked by the European Parliament-under co-deicision only nine have been blocked since the end of 2005-many proposals are significantly altered including on matters of political substance’ (Nugent, 2006)
The European parliament does act as quite an effective legislative system, although it has a more power in certain areas than it does in others. There are certainly a few problems with the parliamentary set up with regard to the power in which it can exercise itself as a effect legislative. Firstly while the European Parliament does have the power of veto, when the legislation goes through the co-decision or assent process, ‘the council has the power to overturn the European Parliaments amendments
that have not been accepted by the commission, and to ignore the European Parliaments rejection of legislative proposals.’ (Nugent, 2006). Another quite important area is that the council at any time can come to the decision not to act upon the proposals for the legislative that it does not like. This obviously takes a huge amount of power away from that of the Parliament and places it in the hands of the council. While in principle the European parliament does have these powers of veto and therefore is quite an effective legislative body, the powers of the council out stip the parliament and therefore significantly reduce parliaments influence in the European Union.
Another area where the Parliaments powers fall down slightly is that it is not always consulted on every single piece of legislation made by the council. Areas such as trade and agreements with third party countries do not under the rules of the Union have to be discussed and looked into with parliament. This is obviously a large gap in the parliaments powers. On the other hand ‘in practice the council, and more particularly the commission usually do discuss on going and forth coming trade matters with the European parliament on an informal basis’ (nugent,2006) However this does not have to be done and on some occasions the parliament is bypassed in the decision making, leaving the Parliament with a limit on its formals powers of legislation.
The final Legislative point that this essay will put forward is that it is not uncommon for the council to make preliminary decisions on the legislation before parliament have put forward there decisions. While the Parliament do attempt to keep up to date and submit any changes or veto’s very quickly in the process to make sure that the council does not make decisions without them, there are sometimes unavoidable delays. ‘Whatever the reason, in such circumstances the European parliaments opinion especially under the consultation procedure is likely to only have limited effect.’ (Nugent 2006)
Bringing this essay to a conclusion it would seem that the European Parliament is not as is general opinion an ineffective institution. The powers that it has of veto both with the assent and co-decision procedures are quite a considerable power. The parliament does also in many cases have the power to change and adapt legislation, to suit its means. The commission is in many case often under considerable pressure to go along with the parliaments decisions, and its is often difficult in practice for the commission or council to not consult the parliament over most areas of legislation. On the other hand there are some area sin which the parliament is not a very effective body at legislation implementation. As previously mentioned the council often makes preliminary decisions before the parliament has had an opportunity to come back with any amendments or veto’s to the legislation, this means that often the parliamentary view points are not taken into full account and sometimes they ae disregarded all together. This is also the situation when it comes to consulting on legislation as the parliament is not fully consulted on all legislation it can not always have an influence over it and therefore becomes an ineffective organisation. Also as the power fo veto that the government has can be over turned by the council at anytime, the effective legislative power is somewhat diminished. There is however the view point that a lot of these fall downs in parliamentary power are not in practice that difficult to overcome, The commission and the council often find it increasingly difficult to over turn the parliaments decisions and go against its veto’s, the parliament also has a large amount of informal power and although the parliament does not have to be consulted on all of the legislative in practice most of it is discussed with them even if this is only on an informal basis. In conclusion the parliament is not the main powerhouse behind legislation within the European Union, however it does have some effective legislative power which the commission and council may find difficult to get in the way of. In practice there are a number of limitations the Parliament though and it is not very effective when it comes to all areas of legislation, however unlike general opinion it does in fact have some quite substantial powers which make it effective in some areas of the legislative process.
