Essay On European Parliament

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The European Parliament
The European parliament (also referred as Europarl or the EP) is directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union (EU) . It’s responsible for making legislative actions across the entire EU and it’s described as the most powerful legislatives in the world .
Purpose:
The purpose of the European Parliament is to provide, its citizen followings :
1. Better agricultural policies, rural development and better food quality
2. Fair competitive environment for both service and manufacturing, consumer protection.
3. Better and safe transportation; and infrastructure
4. Education, Youth, sports and training development
5. Free movements of goods, services and people across the EU
6. Better economic and financial policies
7. Fundamental Human rights
8. Provide better public health
9. Better environment – Waste management, control air and pollution, civil protections
10. Justice, freedom and security
Composition of European Parliament:
The European Parliament is consists of 766 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) . The European citizens vote directly for the MEPs and are elected for 5-year renewable terms. Voting for the MEPs takes place on a national basis and number of MEPs elected in each country based roughly on population size. Germany has the largest number of MEPs (99 seats), while Cyprus, Estonia, and Malta have the smallest (with 6 each). It has been seen that the turnout for EP elections has fallen significantly over the years .
The selected MEPs appoint the president of the European parliament and is responsible for overseeing the all the activities of parliament and its standing committees. The president servers two and half years term and his/her signature is required to ena...

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...of the major issues with EP is the operation cost of European Parliament. There is a high cost associated with MEPs and their staff travelling across the Europe for Plenary meetings in Strasbourg, parliamentary committees and political group meetings is in Brussels and for administrative related work in Luxembourg. This has led awareness about the significant amount of tax payers’ money is being wasted .
EP is also highly criticized for being a bureaucratic and its MEPs have recently found in involving scandals “cash-for-amendments”, “double payment of expenses to the staff members”, “cashed paid with receipts” etc. EP is tightly working on code of conduct regarding gift and hospitality to give to the MEPs .
All of the above issue must be resolved in order for EU to operate more efficiently. And EU is working on all the above issue to gain the trust of EU citizens.

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