The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world, with an electorate of 375 million eligible voters in 2009.
The president of the European Commission is the head of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). The President of the Commission leads a Cabinet of Commissioners, referred to as the College, collectively accountable to the European Parliament. The President is empowered to allocate portfolios among, reshuffle, or dismiss Commissioners as necessary. The College directs the Commission's civil service, sets the policy agenda and determines the legislative proposals it produces. The Commission is the only body that can propose bills to become EU laws.
A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament.
The 2004 European Parliament election was held between 10 and 13 June 2004 in the 25 member states of the European Union, using varying election days according to local custom. The European Parliamental parties could not be voted for, but elected national parties aggregated in European Parliamental parties after the elections.
Independence/Democracy (IND/DEM) was a Eurosceptic political group active during the 2004–2009 term of the European Parliament. The group was the successor to the Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD) group.
Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are considered the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's.
The Barroso Commission was the European Commission in office from 22 November 2004 until 31 October 2014. Its president was José Manuel Barroso, who presided over 27 other commissioners. On 16 September 2009 Barroso was re-elected by the European Parliament for a further five years and his Commission was approved to take office on 9 February 2010.
The political groups of the European Parliament are the officially recognised political groups consisting of legislators of aligned ideologies in the European Parliament.
The apportionment of seats within the European Parliament to each member state of the European Union is set out by the EU treaties. According to European Union treaties, the distribution of seats is "degressively proportional" to the population of the member states, with negotiations and agreements between member states playing a role. Thus the allocation of seats is not strictly proportional to the size of a state's population, nor does it reflect any other automatically triggered or fixed mathematical formula. The process can be compared to the composition of the electoral college used to elect the President of the United States of America in that, pro rata, the smaller state received more places in the electoral college than the more populous states.
The 2009 European Parliament election was held in the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) between 4 and 7 June 2009. A total of 736 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were elected to represent some 500 million Europeans, making these the biggest trans-national elections in history. An additional 18 observers were pre-elected.
Leonard Orban is a Romanian independent technocrat who served as the Commissioner for Multilingualism in the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU). He was responsible for the EU language policy and was the first Romanian Commissioner and the first member of the Commission whose portfolio is exclusively multilingualism. His term of office began on 1 January 2007 and ended on 9 February 2010. With a background in engineering and economics, Orban has taken up various posts working for the accession of Romania to the European Union, most prominently as Deputy and later as Chief Negotiator for his country at the time of final negotiations with the European Union.
Spain is a European Parliament constituency for elections in the European Union covering the member state of Spain. It is currently represented by 59 Members of the European Parliament and is the second largest European Parliament constituency in terms of geographic area after France, as well as the third most populated after Germany and France.
The history of the European Union between 1993 and 2004 was the period between its creation and the 2004 enlargement. The European Union was created at the dawn of the post–Cold War era and saw a series of successive treaties laying the ground for the euro, foreign policy and future enlargement. Three new member states joined the previous twelve in this period and the European Economic Area extended the reach of the EU's markets to three more.
The seventh European Parliament was elected in the 2009 elections and lasted until the 2014 elections.
On 1 January 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became member states of the European Union (EU) in the fifth wave of EU enlargement.
The history of the European Union from 2004 to the present is the current timeline of the European union. It is a period of significant upheaval and reform following the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. The EU has taken on ten new members, eight of which were initially much poorer than the EU average, and took in a further two in 2007 with many more on the way. It created the euro a few years before and had to expand this, and the Schengen Area to its new members. However this was overshadowed by the late-2000s recession and damaging disputes over the European Constitution and its successor, the Treaty of Lisbon. Throughout this period, the European People's Party has been the largest group in the European Parliament and provides every President of the European Commission.
The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is the political group in the European Parliament of the Party of European Socialists (PES). The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats was officially founded as a Socialist Group on 29 June 1953 which makes it the second oldest political group in the European Parliament after Renew Europe (Renew). It adopted its present-day name on 23 June 2009. Centre-left in orientation, the group mostly comprises social-democratic parties and is affiliated with the Progressive Alliance and Socialist International.
The eighth European Parliament was elected in the 2014 elections and lasted until the 2019 elections.
The ninth European Parliament was elected in the 2019 elections and is to last until the 2024 elections.
