The European Parliament: Results of the Latest Elections

One of the most important institutions in the European Union is European Parliament, the only Community institution that meets and debates in public. The author of this essay firstly will pay attention to the structure of this institution and will reflect the power of the European Parliament. One of the main issues of this essay is the elections of the European Parliament held on June 2004, more paying attention to the success of Latvian parties.
The first direct elections of the European Parliament were held in 1979. It is important to add that this institution is elected every five years. After the creating of European Union (European Community) the European Parliament had just a consultative character. It didn’t have any rights of decision making, but the accepted treaties, for example, Maastricht Treaty and the Amsterdam Treaty promoted greater influence and the power of this institution. These two treaties transformed the consultative parliament into the legislative parliament. Today without the agreement of the EP it is not possible to settle about 40 questions on the European level, but the initiative of legislation anyway belongs to European Commission, though EP has rights to require settled legislation’s output.
The European Parliament has three main roles: It shares with the Council the power to legislate. The fact that is a directly-elected body helps guarantee the democratic legitimacy of European law.…