European Union legislative procedure

The European Union adopts legislation through a variety of procedures. The procedure used for a given legislative proposal depends on the policy area in question. Most legislation needs to be proposed by the European Commission and approved by the Council of the European Union and European Parliament to become law.

Over the years the power of the European Parliament within the legislative process has been greatly increased from being limited to giving its non-binding opinion or excluded from the legislative process altogether, to participating with the Council in the legislative process.

The power to amend the Treaties of the European Union, sometimes referred to as the Union's primary law, or even as its de facto constitution, is reserved to the member states and must be ratified by them in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. An exception to this are so-called passerelle clauses in which the legislative procedure used for a certain policy area can be changed without formally amending the treaties.

Since December 2009, after the Lisbon Treaty came into force, three EU institutions have been the main participants in the legislative process: the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, with the national parliaments of the EU playing a further role. The legislative and budgetary functions of the union are jointly exercised by the Parliament and the Council, which are referred to as the Union legislator in a protocol to the EU treaties.

The precise nature of this organisation has been discussed extensively in academic literature, with some categorising the European Union as bicameral or tricameral, though the European Union itself has not accepted such categorisation and it is generally considered to be sui generis by observers, given the unique dynamics between the legislative bodies not found in traditional tricameralism.

The Commission has a virtual monopoly on the introduction of legislation into the legislative process, a power which gives the Commission considerable influence as an agenda setter for the EU as a whole. And while the Commission frequently introduces legislation at the behest of the Council or upon the suggestion of Parliament, what form any legislative proposals introduced take is up to the Commission.^{[citation needed]}

Under the ordinary legislative procedure (see below), the negative opinion from the Commission also forces the Council to vote by unanimity rather than majority except when a conciliation committee has been set up. There are also limited instances where the Commission can adopt legislation without the approval of other bodies (see below).

The European Parliament's 720 members are directly elected every five years by universal suffrage. It organises itself as a normal multi-party parliament in conducting most of its work in its committees and sitting in political groupings rather than national delegations. However, its political groups are very weak due to their status as broad ideological groups of existing national parties.^{[citation needed]}