Documentation Projects and Problems: The European Parliament

Extract

By way of introduction I would like to define the problems particular to the European Parliament, problems which arise in part because of its very nature. It is, in fact, a very different animal from the national parliaments with which we are acquainted. It has a number of specific problems which arise from the very fact that it is different. Perhaps the most important of these is that the Members of the European Parlimant are all members of their own parliaments in the first place: this is a pre-condition before they can come to the European Parliament and means that on top of a very full job of work in their own parliaments, they are expected to find something in excess of 100 extra days in every year to attend meetings of the European Parliament and its committees. Everyone who has talked to his own member of Parliament will, no doubt, have been told “I haven't got a minute to spare. I haven't the time to do anything extra. I can't do half the things I want to do.” If you then tell him “Well, I'm sorry, but you've got to find 100 days,” you will realise the size of the problem we are facing. For the parliamentarian this must mean that he has much less time for his preparatory meetings, much less time for background reading, much less time for writing reports, and must inevitably place much more reliance on the services which the permanent secretariat can provide. This is the first problem.