Mr.Conley
Senior Member
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RRDRDRP
The Economist said:The nuts and bolts of the European Union are hardly riveting, but a basic knowledge of its institutions is essential to understanding how it works, so here is a quick reminder.
At the heart of the EU, as envisaged by its French founding father, Jean Monnet, is the European Commission, to which each national government appoints one commissioner for a five-year term. The “college” of 27 commissioners sits atop a 20,000-strong bureaucracy that constitutes the EU's executive. The commission also has the sole right of initiating legislation, administers the budget and has other independent powers including deciding competition cases and representing the union in trade negotiations.
The commission takes its political cue from the European Council, made up of the 27 heads of government, which meets four times a year and also nominates the commission president. The European Council is, in practice, the highest incarnation of the Council of Ministers, the main law- and budget-making body, which brings together national ministers (eg, of finance, foreign affairs or agriculture). The presidency of the council rotates every six months, so each country now gets to be in the chair once every 13½ years. The council often makes decisions by qualified majority, a weighted system of national votes, but on some issues (eg, taxation) it has to be unanimous.
As part of the council, the high representative for foreign policy reports to national governments and may (or may not) work closely with the commissioner for external affairs. The common foreign and security policy he runs is not part of the classic Monnet machinery (sometimes known as the “community method”, but is formulated by the member governments. The same is true for most policies on justice and home affairs.
The other law- and budget-making body is the European Parliament. It has 785 members, directly elected in rough proportion to each country's population. Like the commission, the parliament serves for five years; unlike the commission, which is in Brussels, it holds its plenary meetings mostly in Strasbourg, though committees meet in Brussels. Most EU laws are subject to “co-decision” by the council and parliament, but in some areas, including justice and home affairs, the parliament has no say. The parliament has to approve the choice of commission president and can dismiss the entire commission, but not individual commissioners.
The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, acts as the EU's supreme court in areas for which the union is responsible (which does not include criminal law, for example). There is one judge per country. A court of first instance helps with the caseload. Cases are decided by simple majority. Luxembourg also hosts the Court of Auditors, which checks EU spending—and qualifies the accounts every year.
The EU has a plethora of other agencies, as well as the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank, the world's biggest multilateral borrower. Among the more puzzling are two Brussels-based advisory bodies: the Economic and Social Committee, which brings together the “social partners”, and the eponymous Committee of the Regions. Between them they cost some €150m ($200m) a year to run, and nobody can remember what they are for. But this being the EU, nobody dares to scrap them either.
