Who would have thought that these “mechanics” of the law
would be the first to break the law. When it comes to engaging the services of
a solicitor they will not move a finger until their very ridiculous fees are
paid AND cleared into their account. However when it comes for them to do
business and require services the story changes. You are required to wait until
their customer pays them. Stupid, right? Especially when you think that they do
not move a finger until they get paid.
There is also another type of “beast”: engaging services
paid by the LSC. This is better than anything else. You are expected to wait
until THEY get paid…and they allegedly do not get paid until the case it’s
finished. LIE..LIE..LIE Could not be a bigger lie. Do not believe them for a
second. What they are actually trying to do is save admin time because they can
apply for interim payments. Therefore why pay YOU on time, when they cannot.
They truly think they are almighty and that nobody will dare
messing with them. I mean, really…who would want to sue a solicitor?
Well. It can be done and you CAN succeed.
Over the years we have heard them all: begging, excuses (in
the very best circumstances),etc. If you threaten to sue them they will send
you intimidating letters stating they will charge their ridiculous fee,
accusations of sending fake vat invoices, etc. I mean really? What else can
they invent?
Every month we have problems with at least 2 of these specimens
Apart from the fact that it pissed off too many stakeholders
from different areas I think they got too gready too. I understand that we live
in world with a messed up economy and one needs to make savings in order to
stay on top of things, however one needs to note “how much savings” and how
these are applied.
Who have they managed to piss off so far? Well…let’s see:
interpreters, translation agencies, MP’s (to be fair some of them as majority
do not care much about it), chartered bodies, alliances, unions, solicitors,
and the list goes on.
The Government/MOJ awarded this contract to ALS in the name
of savings creating a monopoly on the market and allowing to one almighty
agency to rule the market. This is wrong at so many levels.
Firstly we, the UK people, are supposed to be living in a
democratic society and operating a free market. Having one agency rule the
market is not the way forward. Maybe in China and other dictatorship countries…but
UK is supposed to be “special”.
The MOJ did not think for a second that it might actually be
beneficial to attach some strings to this contract such as: use local people
for local jobs, give a certain percentage of jobs to other stakeholders and
agencies, etc? Oh..no..God forbid!
And what does almighty ALS do? They publish piss taking
rates which – note!! – are not for negotiation. These non-negotiable rates are
for freelancers such as spanish
translators who work as self employed. Hmm…I wonder what does HMRC think
about that when one of the tests of establishing if one is self-employed is “who
dictates how where and when and how much”. So then if the answer is ALS, then
surely these people all of the sudden become PAYE. Or has common and statutory
law changed since this contract was awarded? Have we all of the sudden live on
Greek or Spanish grounds?
So their attitude is “take
it or leave it” or “take it or leave profession”! What does the Governement do?
Well…to put is bluntly N O T H I N G. They don’t care people go out of business
– the very business that is suppose to support the fragile economy – and that
these very people are thrown back at the system. How are they thrown back? Well
“simples”: if one can’t afford to live they claim benefits. Superb!
I ALS would have partnered with a few other agencies and
split the pie, they would have had a lot more success.http://www.appliedlanguage.com/
AUDIOVISUAL
TRANSLATION
(AVT) orSCREEN TRANSLATION or MULTIMEDIA TRANSLATION
•Applies to any
text which is transferred through two
codes: the visual and the audio.
•Deals with cinema, television, video
and multidimensional products. It has its own characteristics:
it requires special learning from the professional … due to the constraints and the particular techniques being
used (Agost, 1999: 24-25)
subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing audiodescription
•Live subtitling (e.g. news
broadcasts)
•Surtitling (for opera and the
theatre)
What are they?
•DUBBING:
replacement of the original track of a film for another
on which the translated dialogue is recorded
•VOICE-OVER:
the translator’s voice is heard on
the top of the original. The volume is reduced to a low level that can be still heard in the background.
•SIMULTANEOUS
INTERPRETING: the interpretation occurs
when the SL speaker speaks as quick as the interpreter can formulate the
message in the TL
SUBTITLING
Translation mode which consists in displaying – usually at the bottom of the screen – a text which intends to account for what has been said (or shown in written form) in
the audiovisual product (Díaz-Cintas, 2003:32)
COUNTRIES PREFERENCES
•DUBBING: Spain, Italy, Germany,
France, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic,
Turkey, UK (rare)
•VOICE-OVER:
Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, some CIS
•SUBTITLING:
Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Scandinavia, Romania, Slovenia, Bulgaria, UK
DETERMINING FACTORS
•Economic:
subtitling and voice-over cheaper than dubbing
•Political: dubbing as a form of
censorship
•Ideological:
form of self-defence or as expression of nationalim
(see Catalonia, Quebec, Wales)
•Technical: technologies available
•The force of
the habit: preference for the mode everyone is
more familiar with
PROS AND CONS (I)
DUBBING
•Expensive
•Original dialogue is lost
•Dubbing actors’ voices can become repetitive
•Constrained by lip-sync
•Does not distract attention from image
•Viewer can
follow the sense even if distracted from
watching
•Allows overlapping of dialogues
•Suits for poor readers
PROS AND CONS (II)
SUBTITLING •Pollutes the image
•Requires more
reduction of original information •Dispersion
of attention (2 codes can disorient) •Constrained
by time and space
•Cheap
•Respects integrity of original dialogue
•Suits the hearing impairs and helps immigrants
•Promotes learning of foreign languages
•Quality of original actors’
voice ensured
Stages
of subtitle production
•being offered/accepting the assignment
by a production/distribution
company
•getting the tape/DVD/etc and the dialogue list (if available and possibly, a post-production list).
Time code is essential.
•watching the entire programme
•preparatory work, e.g. checking the accuracy of the dialogue list, linguistic research, background
research
•spotting and then translation or translation
and then spotting
•adaptation
•revision
•sending the work to your client
TCR (Time Code Reader)
Frame = sequence
of images on the screen 1
second = 24 frames (in cinema) = 25 frames (in TV)
SPOTTING
Noting in the
dialogue list when the
subtitles should start
and stop (usually
done by a technician)
TRANSLATION
(I)
•No more than 2 lines on screen
•Each line an
avarage of 35 characters including blanks and
punctuation marks (max 40 in cinema, max 37 in VHS/DVD, max 35 in television)
•6 seconds
rule: an avarage viewer can read a two-line subtitle
of 70 characters in 6 seconds
•Each subtitle
must be a coherent, logical and syntactical unit.
•Each subtitle must appear at the
same time that characters start speaking
and be removed when they stop speaking
TRANSLATION (II)
•Total reduction (elimination) of original information
Creeber, G. (ed.) (2001) The Television Genre Book, London: The
British Film Institute.
Díaz-Cintas, Jorge (2001a) “Striving for
quality in subtitling: the role of a good dialogue list”. In Gambier, Yeves &
Henrik Gottlieb(eds) (Multi)Media Translation: Concepts, Practices and
Research. Amsterdam & Phildalephia: John Benjamins, 199-211.
— (2001b)
La traducción audiovisual: el subtitulado. Salamanca: Almar.
Bibliography (II)
—(2001c)
“The value of the semiotic dimension in the subtitling
of humour”. In Desblache, Lucile (ed) Aspects of
Specialised
Translation. Paris: La maison du dictionaire, 181-191.
—(2003) Teoría y práctica de la subtitulación:
inglés/español. Barcelona:
Ariel.
Díaz-Cintas,
Jorge & Aline Remael (2006) Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. Manchester
and Kinderhook, NY: St Jerome.
Egoyan, Atom & Ian Balfour (eds) (2004) Subtitles: on the Foreigness of Film.
Cambridge, Massachussetts: MIT Press.
Frensham, R. G. (1996) Screenwriting, London: Hodder.
Fuentes Luque, Adrián (2003) “An
empirical approach to the reception of AV
translated humour”. The Translator 9(2): 293-306.
Gottlieb, Henrik (2001) [2000] Screen Translation. Six Studies in
Subtitling, Dubbing and Voice-Over. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.
Bibliography
(III)
Hatim, Basil &
Ian, Mason (1997) “Politeness
in screen translating”. In The Translator as Communicator. London &
New York: Longman Group.
Ivarsson, Jan (1995) “The history of subtitles”. Translatio, Nouvelles de la FIT-FIT Newsletter XIV(3-4): 294-302.
Karamitroglou, Fotios (1998) “A proposed set of subtitling
standards in Europe”. Translation Journal 2(2).
Linde, Zoé de (1995)
“‘Read my lips’: subtitling principles, practices and problems”. Perspectives:
Studies in Translatology 3(1): 9-20.
Mailhac, J.P. (2000) ‘Subtitling and dubbing, for better
or worse? The English video versions of Gazon Maudit’. In M. Salama-Carr (ed.) On Translating French
Literature and Film, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 129-54.
O’Connell, E.M.T. (2003) Minority
Language Dubbing for
Try our quick quiz
challenge to test your EU knowledge. The correct answers will be shown after
you complete each question. Scroll to the bottom of the page to check your
score.
1. The EU’s roots
lie in the Treaty of Rome.
What year did the treaty come into force?
1958 1973 1992
The correct answer
is 1958. Britain
joined in 1973, while the EU name was formally established by the Maastricht Treaty in
1993.
2. Which of the
following countries is not a member of the EU?
Estonia Norway Malta
The correct answer
is Norway.
Estonia and Malta joined in 2004, but Norway has only an affiliate status
as a member of the European Economic Area.
3. How many states
are now members of the EU?
15 25 30
The correct answer
is 25, raised from 15 with the accession of East European and Mediterranean
island states in 2004. The accession process continues, with Bulgaria and Romania
expected to join shortly, and negotiations started with Turkey and Croatia.
4. Who is the
current president of the European Commission?
Romano Prodi Jose Manuel Barroso Jacques Delors
The correct answer
is Jose Manuel Barroso, ex-prime minister of Portugal. Romano Prodi and Jacques Delors
were both past presidents of the Commission.
5. Which country
currently holds the Presidency of the European Union?
The correct answer
is Finland. The EU Presidency is occupied by
a member state rather than an individual. It rotates between member states on a
pre-arranged basis every six months. The UK held the Presidency in the
second half in 2005. For information about the Finnish Presidency, visit http://www.eu2006.fi/en_GB/
For informtion on the UK
Presidency in 2005 visit www.eu2005.gov.uk
6. Which is the EU’s
primary legislative body?
The European
Commission The European Parliament The Council of Ministers
The correct answer
is the Council of Ministers, made up of directly elected ministers from each
member state. The European Commission develops proposals which must be
considered by the Council of Ministers, and only the latter can pass proposals
into law. The European Parliament is the co-legislator for some, but not all,
European legislation.
7. How many UK MEPs are
there in the European Parliament?
101 78 11
The correct answer
is 78. The members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are elected directly for a
five year term by the populations of the member states. There are currently 732
MEPS in total. The elected MEPs sit in seven political groups and not as
national delegations. For more information about your MEP visit the UK Office of the European Parliament
8. What is the
annual net budgetary cost of EU membership per head of the UK population?
£5 £50 £200
The correct answer
is about £50*. However
it’s estimated that EU membership brings an economic benefit to the UK worth about
£300** per head
of the population.
9. How many people
are in the Single European market?
320 million 450 million 250 million
The correct answer
is over 450 million. 320 million was the figure before the 2004 enlargement.
The EU is now the largest single market in the developed world, dwarfing the US home market
of 250 million (though the large size of that home market has been very
significant in supporting the economic prosperity of the USA).
10. Which of these
countries has not adopted the Euro?
Ireland Denmark Greece
The correct answer
is Denmark, which along with the UK and Sweden chose to stay out of Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU) when it was launched in
1999. The Greek economy at the time did not meet
EMU criteria, though it has since joined. The UK has said that it will only join
in EMU when five economic tests are met. Visit www.euro.gov.uk for
more information.
HISTORY OF THE EU
The
European Union was originally called the European Community. It was established
under the Treaty of Rome
in 1957/8. There were five major goals of its establishment. These are:
1.
The removal of barriers to trade among other nations.
2.
The establishment of a single commercial policy towards non-member countries.
3.
The eventual coordination of members' transportation systems, agricultural
policies, and general economic policies.
4.
The removal of private and public measures restricting free competition.
5.
The assurance of the mobility of labor, capital and entrepreneurship among the
members.
The
original members (6) are Belgium, France, Germany
(FRD), Italy,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. They are joined by the United Kingdom,
Denmark
and Ireland
in 1973. In 1981, Greece
joined the EEC. Portugal
and Spain
joined in 1986; while Greenland (a dependent
state of Denmark)
withdrew in 1985. The Treaty of Rome
outlined the methods for integration:
Any
EuropeanState may apply to become a Member of
the Union. It shall address its application to
the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and
after receiving the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by an
absolute majority of its component members. The conditions of admission and the
adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union
is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement
between MemberStates and the applicantState.
This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting
States, in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. (2)
The
establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) in 1952 was the first step towards formal economic cooperation
among Western states.
This "formed a common market for iron, coal and steel products among Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany,
France, Italy,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands." The dual creation, in 1957, of the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and
the European Economic Community (EEC) further
developed unity in economic and political arenas. The EEC was successful in
eliminating tariffs on industrial goods between member countries, and it also
created a common agricultural policy.
These
three communities - the ECSC, EURATOM, and the EEC - were supervised by a
single commission. This became known as the European Community. In 1993, the Maastricht
Treaty forged all three communities into one organ under the aegis of the
European Union (EU). There are three "common foci" of the EU: the
European Community, a promotion of common foreign and security policy, and a
cooperation on justice and home affairs.
1952:
Creation of the European Coal and Steel Community.
1957:
The Treaty of Rome
establishes the European Economic Community.
1957:
The creation of the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM)
1967:
The executive bodies merged together to form a single Council of Ministers and
a single commission.
1991:
The signing of the Maastricht
Treaty by the 12 European Community Heads resulted in an expansion of the
Treaty of Rome.
The EU then evolved to be called the European Union (EU).
1994:
Creation of the European Monetary Institute; would later become the central
bank of the international organization.
Norway is the only country to
have twice rejected membership into the European Union. It is unlikely that the
new Norwegian
government, a minority coalition of the Christian Democratic Party, the
Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, with Kjell Magne Bondevik as the
Prime Minister. Norway
collaborates with the EU on economic ventures, but still remains outside it.
Perhaps Norway's
stance towards the EU will change once the unified currency is introduced in
2002.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is one of
the world's largest central banks, being in charge of monetary
policy for the European Union's official currency, the euro, which is used by over 300 million Europeans
in 12 EU countries.
The European Parliament's origins go back to the
1950s and the founding treaties, and since 1979 its members have been elected
by the people they represent. Every five years elections are held in which
registered EU citizens may vote.
The European Union's activities cover all areas of
public policy, from health
and economic
policy to foreign affairs and defence. However, the extent of its powers
differs greatly between areas. Depending on the area in question, the EU may
therefore resemble a federation (e.g. on monetary affairs, agricultural, trade
and environmental policy, economic and social policy), a confederation
(e.g. on home affairs) or an international organisation (e.g. in
foreign affairs).
The Council of the European Union (French:
Le Conseil de l'Union Européenne, German:
Rat der Europäischen Union) forms, along with the European Parliament, the legislative arm of the
European
Union (EU).
The Council of the European Union contains
ministers of the governments of each of the European Union member states. It is
sometimes referred to in official European Union documents simply as the
Council or the Council of Ministers.
The Council has a President and a Secretary-General.
The President of the Council is a Minister of the state currently holding the Presidency of the
Council of the European Union; while the Secretary-General is the head of
the Council Secretariat, chosen by the member states by unanimity. The
Secretary-General also serves as the High
Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The Council is assisted
by the Committee of Permanent
Representatives (COREPER) , which consists of the ambassadors or their
deputies from the diplomatic representations of the Member States to the
European Communities. COREPER generally prepares the Council agenda, and
negotiates minor and non-controversial matters, leaving controversial issues
for discussion, and other issues for formal agreement, by the Council. Below
COREPER, civil servants from the member states negotiate in Council working
groups, often reaching de facto agreement which is formalised through
COREPER and the Council of Ministers. The Council and its preparatory bodies
are supported by European career civil servants (approximately three thousand
as of July 2005) providing general advice, qualified legal advice, translation
services and impartial negotiation assistance.
The Council of the European Union should be
distinguished from the European Council, which meets four times a year in
what is informally known as the 'European Summit' (EU summit),
and is a closely related but separate body, made up with the heads of state and
government of the member states, whose mission is to provide guidance and high
level policy to the Council. It is also to be distinguished from the Council
of Europe which is a completely separate international organisation (at present
46 states), not a European Union institution.
Role
The Council of the European Union is the main
legislative institution of the EU. According to Article 202 of the Maastricht
Treaty: to ensure that the objectives set out in this Treaty are attained
the Council shall, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty:.
ensure
coordination of the general economic policies of the Member States,
have power
to take decisions,
confer on
the Commission, in the acts which the Council adopts, powers for the
implementation of the rules which the Council lays down. The Council may
impose certain requirements in respect of the exercise of these powers.
The Council may also reserve the right, in specific cases, to exercise directly
implementing powers itself. The procedures referred to above must be
consonant with principles and rules to be laid down in advance by the
Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after
obtaining the opinion of the European Parliament.
In effect, the Council performs the following
functions:
Approval of
the EU budget - the Council and the Parliament must agree on the budget.
Foreign and
defence policy - while each member state is free to develop its own
foreign and defence policy, the Council seeks to achieve a common foreign
and defence policy for the member states.
Economic
policy - the Council also seeks to achieve a common economic policy for
the member states.
Justice -
the Council seeks to co-ordinate the justice system of the member states,
especially in areas such as terrorism.
The European
Parliament (formerly European Parliamentary Assembly) is the parliamentary
body of the European Union (EU), directly elected by EU citizens
once every five years. Together with the Council of Ministers, it composes the
legislative branch of the institutions of the Union. It meets in two locations:
Strasbourg
and Brussels.
The
European Parliament cannot initiate legislation, but it can amend or veto it in
many policy areas. In certain other policy areas, it has the right only to be
consulted. Parliament also supervises the European Commission; it must approve all
appointments to it, and can dismiss it with a vote of censure. It also has the
right to control the EU budget.
The
European Parliament represents around 450 million citizens of the European
Union. Its members are known as Members of the European Parliament
(MEPs). Since 13
June 2004, there have been 732 MEPs. (It was agreed that the maximum number
of MEPs should be fixed at 750, with a minimum threshold of six per member
state and no member state being allocated more than 96 seats.) Elections occur
once in every five years, on the basis of universal adult suffrage. There is
not a uniform voting system for the election of MEPs; rather, each
member state is free to choose its own system subject to three restrictions1:
·The
electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the
proportional nature of the voting system.
·Any election threshold on the national level must
not exceed five percent.
The
allocation of seats to each member state is based on the principle of
degressive proportionality, so that, while the size of the population of each
country is taken into account, smaller states elect more MEPs than would be
strictly justified by their populations alone. As the number of MEPs granted to
each country has arisen from treaty negotiations, there is no precise formula for
the apportionment of seats among member states. No change in this configuration
can occur without the unanimous consent of all governments.
The
most recent elections to the European Parliament were the European elections of 2004, held
in June of that year. These elections were the largest simultaneous
transnational elections ever held anywhere in the world, since nearly 400
million citizens were eligible to vote.
It is
conventional for countries acceding to the European Union to send a number of
observers to Parliament in advance. The number of observers and their method of
appointment (usually by national parliaments) is laid down in the joining
countries' Treaties of Accession.
Observers
may attend debates and take part by invitation, but they may not vote or
exercise other official duties. When the countries then become full member
states, these observers become full MEPs for the interim period between
accession and the next European elections.
In
this way, the agreed maximum of 750 parliamentary seats may temporarily be
exceeded. For instance, in 2004, the number of seats in the European Parliament
was temporarily raised to 788 to accommodate representatives from the ten
states that joined the EU on 1st May, but it was subsequently reduced to 732 following
the elections in June.
Since September
26, 2005, Bulgaria has 18
observers in Parliament and Romania has 35. These are selected from government and
opposition parties as agreed by the countries' national parliaments. In 2007 these observers
will become MEPs, but their number is expected to decrease when the number of
seats assigned to each country is reassessed, according to the Treaty of Nice.
In
five European Union Member States (Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and the United
Kingdom), the national territory is divided into a number of constituencies
for European elections. In the
remaining 20 Member States the whole country forms a single electoral area. In Germany political
parties are entitled to present lists of candidates either at Land
(state) or national level. In Finland they may do so either at electoral district or
national level. In Poland
they may do so only at a constituency level, but seats are allocated
nationally.
Powers and functions
In some respects, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers
resemble the upper and lower houses of a bicameral legislature. Neither the European
Parliament nor the Council of Ministers may initiate EU legislation, this power
being reserved by the Commission, and
the fact that the European Parliament cannot itself propose laws makes it
different from most national legislative assemblies.
However,
once a proposal for an EU law or directive has been introduced by the
Commission, it must usually receive the approval of both Parliament and Council
in order to come into force. Parliament may amend and block legislation in
those policy areas that fall under the codecision procedure, which currently make up
about three-quarters of EU legislative acts. Remaining policy areas fall under
either the assent procedure or (in a very few cases) the consultation procedure; under the former
Parliament has power to veto but not formally amend proposals, while under the
latter it has only a formal right to be consulted. The European Parliament
controls the EU budget, which must be approved by the Council in order to become law.
The President of the European
Commission is chosen by the European
Council, but must be approved by Parliament before she or he can assume
office. The remaining members of the Commission are then appointed by the
President, subject to approval of Parliament. Other than its president, members
of the Commission are not confirmed by the European Parliament individually;
rather, Parliament must either accept or reject the whole Commission en bloc.
The
European Parliament exerts a function of democratic supervision over all of the
EU's activities, particularly those of the Commission. In the event that
Parliament adopts a motion of censure, the entire Commission must resign
(formally, Commissioners cannot be censored individually). However, a motion of
censure must be approved by at least a two-thirds majority in order to have
effect.
Under
the proposed new Constitution for Europe,
Parliament's powers would be enhanced, with almost all policy areas coming
under co-decision, greater powers of democratic scrutiny for Parliament, and
control over the whole EU budget.
Location
Although
Brussels is generally treated as the 'capital' of the European Union, and the
two institutions of the EU's executive, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, both have their seats
there, a protocol attached to the Treaty of Amsterdam requires that the European
Parliament have monthly sessions in Strasbourg.
Thus the European Parliament is sometimes informally referred to as the
'Strasbourg Parliament' and Strasbourg as the democratic (opposed to
bureaucratic) capital of Europe. For practical reasons, however, preparatory
legislative work and committee meetings take place in Brussels. Moreover, the
European Parliament´s secretariat
(administration), which employs the majority of its staff, is located in Luxembourg,
which itself used to host plenary sessions of the parliament.
Parliament
only spends four days of each month in Strasbourg in order to take its final,
plenary votes. Additional plenary meetings are held in Brussels. On several
occasions, the European Parliament has expressed a wish to be granted the right
to choose for itself the location of its seat, and eliminate the two-seat
system, but in the successive treaties, EU member state governments have
continued to reserve this right for themselves. While they did abandon the
third seat of Parliament, Luxembourg, two decades ago, the rival demands of
Belgium (Brussels) and France (Strasbourg) to base parliament in their state
has prevented a final agreement as to which city would become the sole seat of
parliament.
Moving
various files and equipment between the two cities takes 10 large trucks and
the costs for two locations are estimated at € 200 million a year. A force of
30 men loads the trucks for the 400 km journey between the two locations.
Around 5,000 people attached to the European Parliament, such as
parlamentarians, advisors, clerks and journalists, also move between Brussels
and Strasbourg. Most of the parlamentarians are against using Strasbourg and
various initiatives have been taken over the years to have Brussels as the sole
location. The latest of these initiatives is a EU wide online petition which
can be signed on oneseat.eu.
Organisation
The
European Parliament has a number of governing bodies and committees, and a
number of delegations from external bodies.
The
political parties in the European Parliament are organised into a number of
political groupings as well as a number of registered European political parties.
However most continue to be members of separate national political parties and
discipline within European parties and groupings is not rigid. The makeup of
the parliament's groups is fluid, and both national delegations and individual
MEPs are free to switch allegiances as they see fit.
European
Parliament party groups are distinct from the corresponding European political parties, although they
are intimately linked. Usually, the European parties also have member parties
from European countries which are not members of the European Union. At the
start of Parliament's sixth term in 2004 there were seven groups, as well as a
number of non-aligned members, known as non-inscrits.
European Parliament seats by political groups, from 1979 to 2004
As of
April 8, 2006 the composition of the European Parliament is:
The European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) established a 'Common Assembly' in September, 1952, its 78 members
drawn from the six national Parliaments of the ECSC's constituent nations. This
was expanded in March 1958
to also cover the European Economic Community and Euratom, and the
name European Parliamentary Assembly was adopted. The body was renamed
to the European Parliament in 1962. In 1979
the parliament's membership was expanded again and its members began to be
directly elected for the first time. Thereafter the membership of the European
Parliament has simply expanded whenever new nations have joined; the membership
was adjusted upwards in 1994
after German reunification. Recent treaties,
including the Treaty of Nice and the proposed Treaty establishing a
Constitution for Europe, set a cap on membership at 750.
Its
primary roles are to propose and implement legislation, and to act as 'guardian
of the treaties'
which provide the legal basis for the EU. The role of the European Commission
has many parallels with the executive body of a national government, but also
differences (see below for details).
The
Commission consists of 25 Commissioners, one from each member state of the EU,
supported by an administrative body of several thousand European civil servants
divided into departments called Directorate-General. The term "the
Commission" is generally used to refer both to the administrative body in
its entirety, and to the team of Commissioners who lead it.
Unlike
the Council of the European Union, the
Commission is intended to be a body independent of member states. Commissioners
are therefore not permitted to take instructions from the government of the
country that appointed them, but are supposed to represent the interests of the
citizens of the EU as a whole.
The
Commission differs from other institutions in the EU system through its power
of initiative. This means that only the Commission has the authority to initiate
legislation in the areas known as the "first pillar". However, the Council of the European Union and the
European Parliament are both able to formally
request that the Commission legislate on a particular topic. In the areas that
fall within the "second pillar" (foreign policy and defence)
and "third pillar" (criminal law),
the Commission shares the power of initiating legislation with the European
Council.
The
Commission also takes the role of guardian of the treaties, which
includes taking responsibility for initiating infringement proceedings at the European Court of Justice against member
states and others who it considers to have breached the EU treaties and other
community law.
The
Commission is responsible for adopting technical measures to implement
legislation adopted by the Council and, in most cases, the Parliament. This
legislation is subject to the approval of committees made up of representatives
of member states. This process is sometimes known by the jargon term of comitology.
The
Commission also regulatescompetition
in the Union, vetting all mergers with Community-wide effects and initiating
proceedings against companies which violate EU competition laws.
The
European Commission is led by Commissioners who are proposed by national
governments and approved by the European Parliament, rather than being directly
elected by citizens. Although the Commission has no legislative power, it is
essentially the executive of the European Union and is the only body empowered
to draft legislative proposals.
