Intergovernmental decision-making procedures

The aim of the Fact Sheets is to provide an overview of European integration and of the European Parliament’s contribution to that process.

Created in 1979 for Parliament’s first direct elections, the Fact Sheets are intended to provide non specialists with a straightforward and concise — but also accurate — overview of the European Union’s institutions and policies, and of the role that Parliament plays in their development.

The Fact Sheets are grouped into six chapters:

+ How the European Union works, which addresses the EU’s historical development, legal system, institutions and bodies, decision-making procedures and financing;
+ Citizens’ Europe, which describes individual and collective rights;
+ The internal market, which explains the principles and implementation of the internal market;
+ Economic and Monetary Union, which outlines the context of EMU and explains the coordination and surveillance of economic policies;
+ Sectoral policies, which describes how the EU addresses its various internal policies;
+ The EU’s external relations, which covers foreign policy, security and defence, trade, development, human rights and democracy, enlargement and relations beyond the EU’s neighbourhood.

A printed verson is published every five years in advance of an election to the European Parlament. The online pages are reviewed and updated at regular intervals throughout the year, as soon as Parliament adopts any important positions or policies.

Drafted by the policy departments and the Economic Governance Support Unit, the Fact Sheets are available in 23 languages.In the Common Foreign and Security Policy, as well as in several other fields such as enhanced cooperation, certain appointments and treaty revision, the decision-making procedure is different from that prevailing in the ordinary legislative procedure. The dominant feature in these fields is a stronger component of intergovernmental cooperation. The challenge of the public debt crisis has provoked an increased use of such decision-making mechanisms, notably in the framework of European economic governance.

• Primary Source

EP: EPRS: Further Fact Sheets on the European Union http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/search.html?documentTypes=FACT_SHEET

European Parliament: At Your Service: Stay Informed: Fact Sheets on the European Union http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html

Chatham House: Research Paper, 2016: The EU’s Crisis of Governance and European Foreign Policy http://www.europeansources.info/record/the-eus-crisis-of-governance-and-european-foreign-policy/

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