[matt4077]

Not a single piece of EU legislation (both directive and regulation) can be enacted without a majority in the EU parliament.

The only difference to national governments is the lack of a right to initiate legislation. But in practice, they just stick anything they want into any vaguely related piece of regulation. They do have the power to amend.

[Stranger43]

Even if what you stated was true(which is isn't for all cases) it's still a complete reversal of how every single other democratic parliament works as the EU parliament cannot propose anything.

It's correct that the commission(which it itself fairly powerless) have to ask the MEP for yes and no on directives, that is not the case on all regulations passed by the council of ministers as the council can choose to bypass the EU parliament, in cases where no disagreement exist within the council.

[vsl]

There are significant differences:

- no power to propose laws

- process heavily skewed in such way that it's extremely rare to throw Comission proposals entirely

- current procedure for reaching comprosive between EP and Comission is: small working group hashes out compromise text with no public oversight, is then rubber-stamped by plenary

- crucially, low citizen visibility into EP's working, no oversight

The last point is, I believe, crucial. EP is a dumping ground for politicians who failed nationally and gets virtually no press attention. What happens in national parliaments is news, covered in detail, even though the importance of EP, as the place where things can be influenced, is much bigger.

It is very much disfunctional as a democracy.