7th term review  

 

I.                   A European Parliament with greater powers

The Treaty of Lisbon entered into force in December 2009, shortly after the beginning of the 7th legislative term. Parliament saw its powers grow under this Treaty; the codecision procedure became the ordinary legislative procedure, putting Parliament on an equal footing with the Council in nearly every policy area of the European Union, while its budgetary powers were reinforced as well.

 

II.                 European Parliament activity in numbers

The 7th legislative term was marked by the global economic, financial and monetary crisis, which underlined the need for reform in the economic and monetary field. 

During this term, the European Parliament, meeting in plenary session,

  • carried out 23,553 voting operations;
  • considered 44,472 amendments and adopted 21,298; 
  • adopted more than 2,500 texts;
  • completed 919 legislative procedures (i.e. ordinary legislative procedures, consent, consultation and budgetary procedures);
  • completed 89% of the ordinary legislative procedures (580 of 650) at first reading on the basis of early agreements with the Council; this important development of the ordinary legislative procedure reduces the time needed for the adoption of texts;
  • completed 1,798 non-legislative procedures (i.e. 575 own-initiative reports and 549 resolutions on matters of political importance) obliging the Council and/or the Commission to appear before MEPs in plenary.

In the Legislative Observatory you will find key information for all legislative and non-legislative procedures carried out during this legislative term. (Source: Séance en direct - statistics)

 

III.              Parliamentary activity in context

To help provide a more comprehensive view of parliamentary activity, the selected topics of the Legislative Observatory bring together and put into context different legislative or non-legislative procedures dealing with one major issue.


Here is an indicative list of issues of major importance that were addressed during the last legislative term:

a)                  Multiannual financial framework and cross-cutting policies

Parliament's new powers resulted in extensive negotiations with the Council on the multiannual financial framework of the European Union for the years 2014-2020, which led to the reform of the most important EU policies being finally adopted in November 2013. 

 

 

b)                 External relations and foreign affairs

Parliament's new powers with regard to giving consent to international agreements allowed it to prevent the conclusion of the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA), to secure renegotiation of agreements with the United States on access to banking data and data on air passengers and generally impose conditions when negotiating new trade agreements.

 

 

c)                  Economic and financial affairs

In the context of the financial crisis and the crisis in the euro area, the activity of the Parliament was particularly important in the field of economic governance, financial services, banking supervision and crisis management.

 

 

 

d)                 Social affairs

In the social field, Parliament gave impetus to a guarantee scheme for young people and successfully fought for the maintenance of a European fund to help the most deprived persons in the Union.

 

 

e)                  Citizens' rights

As regards collection of personal data by social networks, search engines and other online service providers, Parliament considered a major overhaul of rules on data protection in the EU.

 

 

f)                   Internal market

In the context of strengthening the internal market, Parliament considered a number of new legislative packages:

 

 

g)                  Freedom, Security and Justice

With regard to the free movement of persons, Parliament adopted the common European asylum system and upheld the Schengen acquis.

 

12/05/2016

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