ABSTRACT
The European Parliament has been directly elected since 1979. MEPs themselves like to emphasize that the European Parliament is the only directly elected European Union (EU) institution. During the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s the parliament was progressively granted greater powers – with every new EU treaty, power balance between the two legislatures, parliament and council, changed in the parliament's favour. The Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in 2009, puts the parliament on an even footing with the council when it comes to adopting the annual EU budget and almost all new EU laws. The European Parliament's main task is to make laws for the EU as a whole. On the European Parliament's website, you can click through to each MEP's own page. There you find contact details for the MEP and information about which committees and delegations he/she is a member of. There are many own-initiative reports on foreign policy, over which the European Parliament hardly has any power.
