European Parliamentary Research Service Blog
legislative procedures
Understanding the d’Hondt method: Allocation of parliamentary seats and leadership positions [Policy Podcast]
The allocation of seats in collegiate organs such as parliaments requires a method to translate votes proportionally into whole seats. The ‘d’Hondt method’ is a mathematical formula used widely in proportional representation systems, although it leads to less proportional results than other systems for seat allocation such as the Hare-Niemeyer and Sainte-Laguë/Schepers methods. Continue reading
Legislation in progress: analyse, analyse, analyse
Written by Clare Ferguson The Members’ Research Service of EPRS is on a mission: to provide Members of the European Parliament with systematic and automatic analysis on all substantial proposals for EU legislation at every stage of the legislative procedure. This strategy of routine programming of pro-active publications, deliberately takes the political cycle into account, … Continue reading
The Open Method of Coordination
Written by Martina Prpic The EU response to the 2008 economic crisis, which has exposed the weaknesses of the EU economic governance of the time, has resulted in a debate on how to find a balance between intergovernmentalism and supranational actions within the EU framework, bringing into question further use of soft intergovernmental methods, such … Continue reading
In focus – the European Parliament has more power
The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected EU institution. The upcoming elections will highlight the increase in its powers subsequent to the Lisbon Treaty – for example, the EP will elect the European Commission President, on the basis of a proposal from the Heads of State, and taking into account the European elections. … Continue reading
Twenty years of co-legislation: from co-decision to ordinary legislative procedure
Under the co-decision procedure, a proposal needs to be approved by both the European Parliament and the Council in order to be adopted as legislation. The procedure was introduced just over twenty years ago in the Maastricht Treaty. Over time, its scope has gradually been extended to new policy areas and practices of legislative negotiations … Continue reading
Parliament’s legislative initiative
The European Commission has a near monopoly on legislative initiative in the European Union (EU), with special initiative rights for other institutions applying only in certain specific cases. However, the European Parliament (EP), and the Council, have the right to invite the Commission to present legislative proposals. Whilst this ‘indirect’ initiative right does not create … Continue reading
European small claims procedure: An opportunity for enhancing cross-border enforcement
Legislatures in some EU Member States (MS) have introduced special, simplified and accelerated tracks for small claims in legally uncomplicated cases. Those procedures vary both as regards the threshold and level of simplification. The Treaty of Amsterdam gave the EU powers to harmonise civil procedure. As part of that mandate, the EU has adopted a … Continue reading
Policy and legislative evaluation in the EU
Evaluating policy and legislative measures helps to improve the accountability and efficiency of the public sector. At European Union level evaluations are located largely at the European Commission. Its evaluations focus mainly on EU expenditure programmes. Legislative evaluation, usually conducted in the form of Impact Assessments (IA), has also gained in importance. Moreover, some Member … Continue reading
Delegated and Implementing Acts
This compilation of information sources was created in September 2012 and updated in January 2014. The so-called comitology system, based on five different comitology procedures, was reformed by the Lisbon Treaty. A new approach to delegated and implementing decision making was introduced in the form of two new and separate regimes: Delegated acts (art. 290 … Continue reading
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