The European Parliament was designed to be the democratic engine of European integration. In the current legislative cycle, it has been reduced to a ratification chamber \u2014 lending procedural legitimacy to deals struck elsewhere while its own initiative reports gather dust in committee archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The erosion did not happen overnight. It accelerated during the pandemic, when the European Council assumed crisis-management authority and never fully returned it. Emergency powers granted to the Commission \u2014 on vaccine procurement, on economic recovery fund design, on border restrictions \u2014 bypassed parliamentary scrutiny with the justification that speed mattered more than deliberation. The justification was reasonable. The precedent was not. When the crisis passed, the Council retained its expanded role, and the Commission discovered that governing without parliamentary interference was considerably more efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Parliament’s own internal fragmentation has compounded the problem. The June 2024 elections returned a chamber more divided than any in its history, with no stable coalition commanding a working majority on any major dossier. The grand coalition of centre-right and centre-left that historically drove legislation forward has splintered into issue-by-issue alliances that shift with each vote. Committee rapporteurs spend more time negotiating internal compromises than shaping external legislation. The result is an institution that moves slowly, speaks with multiple voices, and can be safely ignored by a Commission that prefers to negotiate directly with national capitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This matters beyond institutional turf wars. The Parliament is the only EU institution directly elected by citizens. When it is sidelined, the democratic link between European governance and European voters thins to the point of invisibility. Turnout in the last election was presented as a success \u2014 just above fifty percent \u2014 but that figure masks profound disengagement in member states where the Parliament is perceived, not without reason, as decorative. If the institution cannot assert its legislative prerogative in this cycle, the question will shift from whether it is becoming irrelevant to whether it already is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Parliament was designed to be the democratic engine of European integration. In the current legislative cycle, it has been reduced to a ratification chamber \u2014 lending procedural legitimacy to deals struck elsewhere while its own initiative reports gather dust in committee archives. The erosion did not happen overnight. It accelerated during the pandemic, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"author_name":"NewEU Editorial Board","author_role":"Staff Editorial","published_date":"2025-04-10","topic_tag":"EU Parliament"},"class_list":["post-37","neweu_editorial","type-neweu_editorial","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/editorials\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/editorials"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/neweu_editorial"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onyxsilk.vagabond.andreidraganescu.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}