(hopefully)
My goal was to do a series of video-interviews with the people I visited while I was in London last month. To get a Londoners perpective on the EU and my (Dutch) reflection on that.
Instead, I ended up investigating a question from a friend that kept me rather busy the last few weeks (to say the least!).
The question: How much influence does the European Parliament actually have? And therefore does my vote have influence?
The question is simple enough, finding an answer proved to be rather complicated. I got reconfirmed why I lacked knowledge of the European Parliament. Its position within the EU is downright complex.
Nonetheless, I attempted to simplify the way the EP has influence and explain it in the video below. Fingers crossed that I succeeded at that (or at least make you realise that it’s complicated ;-)).
The sources I used:
http://www.europa-nu.nl
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europese_Unie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
http://www.europarl.europa.eu
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/Result.do?RechType=RECH_celex&lang=en&code=32006Q0614(01)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2006:139:0001:0017:EN:PDF
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/budget_glance/index_en.htm
http://www.europamorgen.nl/9353000/1/j9vvhjdld5qbiyg/vgaaaujza2vo
(32 votes, average: 4.03 out of 5)
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Excellent work, indeed!!
And although similar videos might exist somewhere else, it shows what an individual can do in helping to explain the European Union, how nicely you can pack it, and how creative thinking makes the Union more interesting. Very well done.
I like, in particular, your last sentence: “By choosing one MEP over another, we tell our governments, what we deem important for the next five years.”
When you put it like this, we do not only vote for our influence on European policy-making in the parliament, but we indirectly influence the policy-making of our governments when they come to the European level. I am not sure how strong this effect is, but there should some.
Very good presentation. I’ll try to translate it to bulgarian and post it in bulgarian blogs as well.
Thanks for the compliments.
@Boyan: translation would be awesome!
@Julien: since the EP has to negotiate with the Council (our national ministers) on a lot of topics, it might be a stronger effect than we think. Still, it is indirect influence of course.
This is indeed a great video. Well done! Especially the graphs are great.
Don’t know whether I would put a direct arrow between the European Council and the Commission in one of your first graphs. There is usually no direct link in legislative issues. Agenda-setting in EU policy making is only the responsibility of the Commission.
The Lisbon Treaty would actually remove the compulsory/non compulsory budget distinctions completely and increase the involvement of the EP. Would be an interesting point for the next video!
In many countries you cannot vote on individual candidates but only on party lists, so it is debatable whether individual candidates or rather political groups/parties have a bigger influence in the EP.
I am already looking forward to your next video!
@Andreas: I didn’t realize that you can’t always vote for an individual. So yeah, debatable point.
Will contemplate adjusting the video after the Lisbon Treaty is through (still not there,yet).
One problem with the debate about the Lisbon treaty is actually that a lot of people do not realize that the EP will actually get significantly more power. If the Lisbon treaty enters into force (which is quite likely..) it will be the next European Parliament that will work under the new rules. So in a way, voting this time is more important than in the past…
very nice, Elmine! I wish I knew how to make such cool little videos and graphics.
you describe quite well what this all institutional organized chaos is about, but I don’t know to what extent we can convince people this way about the importance of voting in european elections. in elections in general, people need to feel that the stakes of the elections are as close to them as possible. while I personally agree that the EP is dealing with very important issues with direct relevance for our daily lives, I think your kind of effort would be more succesful if it explained how the decisions of the EP (and of EU institutions in general) are transposed into internal legislation and, hence, what are the links between the EU institutions and national ones. what is the road of a piece of legislation from its adoption in the EP until the public servants of local administrations in Romania, the Netherlands, Poland etc.
this could also be a subject for a future cool video
@Andreas So true!
@George Good point you’re raising. Considered the time it cost me to create this one, I can’t make any promises for future episodes
Perhaps I can inspire you to make one
you did inspire me
Very good video! I was wondering what tool you used for the animations (if it’s not a secret
), cause they look really professional.
Thanks and keep up the good work!
No secret at all, Anda.
I use a Mac and for the animations I used Keynote (Apple’s version of Powerpoint). In Keynote you can export slides (or complete slideshows) to a .mov, which you can import as movieclips in (in my case) iMovie.
And if you’re interested, I wrote a post on my own blog about the production process of this video:
http://elmine.wijnia.com/weblog/2009/04/the-making-of/
Thanks a lot!
Elmine, I think that would be a great post for our coummunity page at http://we.thinkaboutit.eu/ as it could help other Th!nkers to get some valuable insights into the production process!
Good idea Andreas. Needs a bit of editing, since the context is different. On my todo list for next week
congratulations!!
Great video!
Congratulations on winning “Best Post” for this creative and highly-polished video! Much deserved!
[...] couple of weeks ago Elmine also did a great video on Th!nkaboutit.eu pondering about the question: “How much influence does the European Parliament actually have? [...]