First, there is the European Parliament, which is part of the European Union. Its members are directly elected by voters in all member states to represent people’s interests with regard to EU law-making and to make sure other EU institutions are working democratically.
It meets in Strasbourg and Brussels, but also has a base in Luxembourg – three parliamentary estates which the EU taxpayer funds. As its members move between the two buildings, they are preceded by a cavalry of trucks carrying all their workloads and briefing documents. To this end, the European Parliament has its own Directorate-General for Infrastructure and Logistics.
It has its own president – Martin Schultz – but he’s not the same as the president of the European Commission, who is Jean-Claude Juncker. The parliament is made up of eight political groups – none of which each voter actually voted for.
— Martin Schulz (@MartinSchulz) May 9, 2014
After a long democratic journey, today my team crossed the finishing line. #TeamJunckerEU pic.twitter.com/tADHv54DVT
— Jean-Claude Juncker (@JunckerEU) October 22, 2014
Secondly, there is the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which has nothing to do with the European Union. This one was set up after British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill called for a "kind of United States of Europe". It concerns itself with human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and which oversees the European Court of Human Rights.
©Council of Europe
Posted by Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Monday, February 18, 2013
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is made up of lawmakers from each of the national parliaments of the Council of Europe's 47 member states and generally meets four times a year for week-long plenary sessions in Strasbourg. But not in the same building as the European Parliament.
Détente and Subsidiarity
Then there is the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly, which was set up during the political détente phase of the early 1970s, when the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) was created to serve as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West.
Not to be outdone, there is also the Assembly of European Regions which describes itself as the largest independent network of regional authorities in wider Europe, bringing together regions from 35 countries along with 15 interregional organisations.
What do they do? Their mission is "to establish the principle of subsidiarity as the guiding principle underpinning policy making in Europe." (We hope that helps!) It comprises regional administrations from all its members, like Nordland in Norway, Hampshire in the UK (the ONLY UK region represented), Thurgau in Switzerland and Osijek-Baranja County in Croatia.
With such a proliferation of powerhouses in Europe, is it surprising that public opinion on European institutions is so low?
