Problematica începerii mandatului europarlamentarilor. Proceduri specifice
Issues across legislative terms: examining the start of mandate of MEPS in the European Parliament

Summary/Abstract: Bringing the European dimension into perspective and presenting some of its valences, this study about the European Parliament's members comes to reveal the informational goal that the European citizens seem to have about the role and the activities of the European Union. From a theoretical point of view, it is assumed that the electorate can influence the Union's work directly – through European elections and indirectly – through national elections. Practice, instead, proves that the European voters, in the absence of a real awareness of the importance of the European institutions combined with the ignorance of the role of their representatives in these institutions, cause them to fail to get involved in the European decision – making process. Presenting the specificities that characterize the exercise of a European mandate, this analysis wants to contribute to the „electoral reconnection” of the MEPs with European citizens if we are to paraphrase the expression used by the American political scientist David Mayhew in 1974. On this regard, our attention has been redirected to identifying all those „levers” available to MEP's to shape EU policies to the benefit of European citizens. The conclusion of such approach is a natural – rational consequence of all those presented during these lines: to be able to speak in the EU of a democratic policy, in the true sense of the word it is necessary that between citizens and the legislative body, respectively the European Parliament there must exist a relationship based on continuous negotiations between the voter and the elected who can be sanctioned when voters feel that their interests are no longer represented by that political body.

• Details
• Contents