Khudair Abbas Al-Dahlaki- Researcher specializing in Shan European far-right forces
Introduction
The European Parliament is the largest and most important democratic legislature for the representatives of some 500 million citizens of the European Union.
The European Parliamentary Assembly was established in Strasbourg, France, in the presence of 142 members on 19 March 1958 to be called the “European Parliamentary Assembly,” before later becoming the European Parliament on 30 March 1962. After the European Market Summit in Paris in 1974, the process began after 1978, and the selection of deputies to the European Parliament by local parliaments ended in the first elections to this Parliament in June 1979.
Today the European Union has decided to organize elections for the 2024 legislative session from 6 to 9 June 2024, which will be the tenth since the first direct election in 1979, and the first post-Brexit elections for the European Parliament.
I. Overview of the Institution of the European Parliament:
MEPs are elected every five years by universal suffrage, which begins with the process of selecting the heads of key European institutions (Parliament, Commission, and Council), and legislative elections for the next 2024-2029 session will be held to select 720 MEPs between 6 and 9 June 2024. It is the world’s largest cross-border vote, with more than 400 million eligible voters of different nationalities taking part in the voting process for their political representatives in the European Parliament.
Currently, the role of the European Parliament is to “become the main institution representing the peoples of EU member states, it is included in treaties and takes precedence over all other European authorities.” He explained, “His competence extends continuously, as he has real legislative power and considerable power concerning certain files, as well as his monitoring role, which, together with the European Council, adopts the legislation of all European laws, as well as the annual budget that funds the policies of the Union. It also has the power to grant its consent to any trade agreement, and to monitor negotiations by the European Commission, over which political oversight is also exercised, (the composition of the Commission is linked to the results of the European Parliament elections). Parliament also elects the President and organizes hearings for candidates for commissioners.
The number of elected MEPs is 751, the maximum possible under EU treaties. However, the exit of the United Kingdom reduced the number of members to 705. (Annex 1 contains a distribution of seats in Parliament to political groups before and after the United Kingdom leaves the Union) Germany has 96 members, the highest number that states can reach, against a minimum of six seats reserved for small states, and Spain and France will benefit from five new members, while the rest of the reduced seats from 751 seats will be allocated to new member states in the future. During September 2023, members of the European Parliament approved the decision of the European Council to increase the number of seats in the European Parliament for the next legislative session from 705 to 720 and to distribute them to member states according to population ratio. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will increase by one seat each, according to the table in (Supplement No. 2). The European Council motion was based on the June 2023 Parliament report, which began the process and has been driven by demographic changes in the EU since the 2019 elections.
