Reforms of the European Parliament

In this part of the presentation, I'm going to speak a little about the potential reforms that could be made to the European Parliament to make it a more powerful institution. My main source of information when it came to these reform ideas where the core text by Neil Nugent, Michelle Cini's "European Union Politics" and Judge and Earnshaw's "The European Parliament", which can be found on the reading list for this seminar. I found them to be good sources of information, as they lay out powers and roles of the European Parliament, as previously laid out in this presentation, and the problems they encounter. I also looked online for any more insight, but what I found was just a substandard version of the information that is laid out in these texts. From these, I have managed to investigate the possibility of reforms, and will now present to you my findings.

The obvious and probably most controversial way the European Parliament can become more powerful is if national parliaments were to give up more of their sovereign powers to the European Parliament. For example, the European Parliament is weak when it comes to foreign affairs, as it has little to no real policy in this area. This was seen when some nations participated and others refused to go to war with Iraq in participation with the USA and a stance form the European Union, and in this case the European Parliament was not forthcoming. There have also been previous flirtations with the idea of creating an EU army, but there is too much opposition from within a number of nations to give up sovereign powers, and countries may not want to commit to such excursions. Of course in Britain, there is intense opposition and scrutiny toawards any such measure taken by the government of the day that would infringe on any sovereign powers being transferred, with tabloid headlines fearing a "Rule by Brussels" as it were.

However simpler and less controversial measures can be taken to create a better European