European Union legislative procedure

The European Union adopts legislation through a variety of legislative procedures. The procedure used for a given legislative proposal depends on the policy area in question. Most legislation needs to be proposed by the European Commission and approved by the Council of the European Union in order to become law.

Over the years the power of the European Parliament within the legislative process has been greatly increased from being limited to giving its non-binding opinion or excluded from the legislative process altogether, to participating equally with the Council in the legislative process.

The power to amend the Treaties of the European Union, sometimes referred to as the Union's primary law, or even as its de facto constitution, is reserved to the member states and must be ratified by them in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. An exception to this are so-called passerelle clauses in which the legislative procedure used for a certain policy area can be changed without formally amending the treaties.

The European Parliament's 751 members are directly elected every five years by universal suffrage. It organises itself as a normal multi-party parliament in conducting most of its work in its committees and sitting in political groupings rather than national delegations. However, its political groups are very weak due to their status as broad ideological groups of existing national parties.

The Parliament's powers have grown considerably since the 1950s as new legislative procedures granted more equality between Parliament and Council. It also has gained greater powers over the appointment of the Commission, which has always been responsible to it (Parliament has the power of censure).

The Council of the EU represents the national governments of member states, and hence its composition is essentially the number of member states (28) though votes are weighted according to the population of each state (see procedures below for clarification). As such, it does not sit according to political groups and rather than conducting most of its work in committees, much of its work is prepared by diplomatic representatives (COREPER).

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