Reforms Of The European Parliament

In this part of the presentation, I'm going to speak a little about the potential reforms that could be made to the European Parliament to make it a more powerful institution. My main source of information when it came to these reform ideas where the core text by Neil Nugent, Michelle Cini's "European Union Politics" and Judge and Earnshaw's "The European Parliament", which can be found on the reading list for this seminar. I found them to be good sources of information, as they lay out powers and roles of the European Parliament, as previously laid out in this presentation, and the problems they encounter. I also looked online for any more insight, but what I found was just a substandard version of the information that is laid out in these texts. From these, I have managed to investigate the possibility of reforms, and will now present to you my findings.

The obvious and probably most controversial way the European Parliament can become more powerful is if national parliaments were to give up more of their sovereign powers to the European Parliament. For example, the European Parliament is weak when it comes to foreign affairs, as it has little to no real policy in this area. This was seen when some nations participated and others refused to go to war with Iraq in participation with the USA and a stance form the European Union, and in this case the European Parliament was not forthcoming. There have also been previous flirtations with the idea of creating an EU army, but there is too much opposition from within a number of nations to give up sovereign powers, and countries may not want to commit to such excursions. Of course in Britain, there is intense opposition and scrutiny toawards any such measure taken by the government of the day that would infringe on any sovereign

powers being transferred, with tabloid headlines fearing a "Rule by Brussels" as it were.

However simpler and less controversial measures can be taken to create a better European Parliament, and to do this there must be a re-look at the day to day of a MEP. What can and often does hinder an MEP is that often the timings of some committee meetings will clash, forcing the MEP to make up his/her mind as to what committee meeting to miss and which to go to. This often in turn co-incides with meetings with lobbyists which takes up quite a bit of time with negotiations and settlements being made. An MEP will spend some of his time in his elected constituency which if he/she comes the British Isles means time and money spent commuting just to meet their roles. To create a more efficient and smooth running European Parliament, the day to day life of the MEP must be revised and made more functional if any progress was to be made.

An argument that is often made on the weakness of the European Parliament is that it has an inability to create and form any sort of government or executive body. Any potential European government would, it is thought, give leadership, direction, an opposition to scrutinise dealings and it is thought that if people could see a political system they are used to in their home nations, more people will take an interest and support the EU as a whole, as there is currently a thought that the masses aren't interested in the EU, and are starting to doubt it's credibility. While that may be the case, there is a counter argument towards this idea. A smooth running, coherent and functioning executive may not be practical, as the European Parliament is made up of different nationalities, political leanings and points of view. Any kind of government would have problems coming to decisions because of these reasons.

As there is a lack of executive in the European Parliament, there has been a distinct lack of progress over the years to address the deficiency in the area of Ð''executive oversight'. An increasing amount of executive decisions that are being made are reluctant to yield to EU scrutiny. A better European Parliament must have more scrutiny on the decisions being made, and every European Minister must be forced to be accountable to the appropriate body. As it is, this situation doesn't inspire public confidence and gives ammo to those who are targeting to remove the European Union, or alternatively remove their home nation from the institution.