12 february 2011, strasbourg: bring the roof down

A couple of years ago the roof fell in on the european parliament building in strasbourg, literally. It was plastered up, and the travelling circus that gives the parliament such a bad name continued. That was a tragedy, as to an ever larger degree it is europe, rather than national parliaments, that determine legislation, and a directly-elected institution needs deeper roots and credibility. 90% of lawmakers have now come round to this, catching up with the rest of us. However strasbourg week will continue as long as france doggedly refuses to concede, and everyone else holds up their hands and says it needs a unanimously-agreed treaty change. These do though come along more often than most people imagine (30 oct), the next set piece being when croatia becomes a member state. Change is needed: parliament works ever day on laws that directly affect citizens in areas such as car exhaust emissions, mobile phone charges, gas bills, insurance contracts and waste disposal, and, (jointly with the council, a process known as "co-decision") passes them. At that point, they are sent down to national parliaments (and governments), who translate them into national law - see parliament of bores. The 736 MEPs are also the eu's budgetary authority, deciding how to spend most of the money, and scrutineer of the commission, the ecb and the other institutions. It is ironic that whilst parliament's powers have increased with every treaty, turnout at european elections has consistently declined, from 62% in 1979 to 43% in 2009. As to why the dog ate most voters' registration forms, surely the idiocy that is the strasbourg commute and even more importantly the eu's inability to fix it - a symptomatic story of narrow self-interest blocking obviously logical reform - has to take some of the blame.