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Today we are going to talk about the European Parliament. What is the European Parliament? It is the Parliament of the Union and it can be compared, up to a certain extent, to a national Parliament. Actually, the European Parliament has begun to be elected by universal suffrage only recently (to be precise since 1979); before 1979 it was a meeting of Members of Parliament, as Charles De Gaulles defined it. In fact, they were members of Parliament sent by each single Parliament to Strasbourg and to the other seats of the European Union to represent people’s will within the European Union. Anyway, we must pay attention to this regard, since the European Parliament had still to gain the traditional functions of a parliament; it still had to become what it is today. Today the European Parliament represents millions of citizens, appointed by direct universal suffrage, according to the legislation of each state. What does this mean? This means that there isn’t any uniform voting procedure: in Great Britain they use a majority system; in Italy they use the proportional representation system. So each country uses its own voting system. The elections are held in June, from 9 to 13 June. In some countries they are held in one single day, in some other countries in 2 days; that is to say that differences still exist, but the aim is the same: to elect this Parliament directly. As you know, the last elections of the European Parliament have recently occurred: the new Parliament has been operating since 2004. Parliament is composed according to the demographic weight of member states and the country having the biggest weight is Germany. Obviously, it is the most populated country, with up to 80 millions of inhabitants and therefore, according to the Treaty of Nice- that for the moment regulates this parliamentary assembly, up to the enforcement of the new constitution- it has 99 members of Parliament. The smallest countries, such as Luxembourg or Malta, have 6 members of Parliament. The European Parliament will be, in the next elections, a legislative assembly but just a little bit more numerous, since they have tried to limit the number of the members of Parliament. It will represent about 480 millions of European citizens, because, as you know, the Union has passed from the 15 countries that composed it up until a few time ago, to 25 countries, and, starting from 2007, there will be 27 countries, since also Bulgaria and Romania will enter the great European family. The European Parliament is made up of a series of political groups representing the main political parties formed within certain agreements made among the different delegations of the Parliament itself. The most important families are: the Socialist group, the Christian Democrat group and the Liberal group; then there are the right-centred parties and the left-centred ones that compose the entire political scene. The European Parliament meets in Strasbourg, but this is not the only place of work. Another place of work of the Parliament is Brussels. We must consider the fact that, before arriving to Brussels, the European Parliament has had to fight, since the member states had decided for Strasbourg as a temporary seat of the European Parliament. Only after the construction of the new Parliament’s building in Brussels, the members of Parliament have been allowed to meet, every now and then, in a so-called "plenary mini session", in Brussels too.
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