March 2015 - Who Makes EU Laws?
Members of the Horndean & District U3A met for their regular monthly meeting on Friday 6th March at Merchistoun Hall. The weather was glorious and the hall was, again this month, full. The Members enjoyed a comprehensive talk on “EU Laws – Who is making them?” by Elisabeth Sweeney who is the Information Officer at the European Parliament Office in London for the UK.
The non-political talk was accompanied by a power point presentation covering how the EU was set up and how it has evolved since its inception involving just six to twenty-eight Member States and she explained how making EU law into UK law happened (known as Transposition). In total there are 751 MEPs of which there are 73 from the UK based on population.
Elisabeth stressed the inaccuracies and negativity of our press and suggested to get a more accurate view of the EU Parliament and what goes on, to check online at http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/commons-standard-notes/european-union and also http://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html. Topics covered on their website range from types of EUR-lex documents; summaries of EU legislation; legislation on statistics; budget; drafting guide; latest developments and previous versions of EUR-lex.
You can find information about the European Scrutiny Committee who took evidence from the Financial Secreary to HM Treasury on 4th Nov 2014 on the revised increase in the UK’s contribution to the EU on http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/european-scrutiny-committee/news/eu-budget-evidence-session/
Elisabeth covered what the EU does not do; that it is based on the rule of law - agreed within treaties; exclusive competence; supportive complementary competence; what it is doing currently; institutions set up following WW2; criteria for membership; free movement and who is involved.
She explained the different types of EU legislation – EU REGULATIONS which are directly applicable in ALL 28 countries at the same time and in the same way. No transposition into national law and EU DIRECTIVES transposed into national law with room for national differences in implementation with an agreed deadline and EU DECISIONS specific to an organisation or to a country.
Our region is part of the South East which has ten MEPs , elected every five years by proportional representation and sit in the European Parliament in Strasbourg and their activities can be watched via http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/plenary/videodebate and www.votewatch.eu.
Elisabeth gave us a very comprehensive and interesting talk on this extremely broad subject. Many questions were posed and happily answered by her.
Diane Stoner, Speaker Co-ordinator