POLI 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: President Of The European Commission, European Union Legislative Procedure
15 Jun 2018
School
Department
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POLI205
November 27th,2017
Structure of the EU
1)European Commission
• Located in Brussels, Belgium
• Its role is to identify problems and propose solutions to the Council of the European Union
• The Commission consists of 28 individuals one from each member statee
• The commissioners are supposed to represent, the supranational interest of Europe, and not of
their own states
• The Commissioners serve five-year terms that are renewable
• The commissioners are nominated by their national governments
• They are then appointed and given policy responsibilities by the commission president
• Finally the Commissioners must be approved by the European Parliament
• The Commission President serves a five-year term
• The President is selected by consensus by the European Council, and approved by the European
Parliament
• The current president is Jean-Claude Jucker (Luxembourg) since 2014
2)Council of the European Union
• A meeting of the relevant ministers of each member state (foreign, finance, agriculture
ministers, etc)
• The council meets in ten different configurations
• the presidency of the council is held for six months by each member state in turn
• The Council represents eber states’ iterests.
• The Council Makes policies which the commission implements
• The council also considers proposals from the Commission, which the council may modify
before adopting
• On a broad range of issues, EU legislation (2/3 of the time) is the adopted jointly by the Council
and the European Parliament using a procedure known as co-decision
• To be passed, Council decisions require a qualified majority of 16 countries representing 65% of
the EU population
3)European Council
• Consist of the leaders of the member states, who meet with the commission President and the
President of the European Parliament a maximum of four times per year
• Headed by a president who is elected for a 21/2 year term, renewable once
4)European Parliament
• Located in Strasbourg, France
• The Parliament shares legislative power equally with the Council of the European Union (co-
decision) has budgetary powers, and exercises democratic control over the EU
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