The European Union was originally a coal and steel partnership designed to enhance trade after WWII. Today, more than 27 nations make up the EU, and each document (and most meetings) are translated into 23 official languages. Whew! That makes for a LOT of translators. In fact, the European Union is the largest employer of translators in the world!!
Three main institutions make up the European Union: The Parliament, the Council, and the Commission. (More about that later…)
I worked for the parliament, the only directly elected body of the European Union. Each country elects a number of representatives proportional to the population of the nation. (Sort of like our House of Representatives)
This means that tiny countries like Slovakia and Slovenia are not quite the powerhouses that Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom are when it comes to voting.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are aligned by party, and not by country. However, sometimes an MEP will break party lines to vote for something that is a country line.
The largest parties of the European Union are the European People’s Party, the Socialists, and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats.
The EU has three main jurisdictions: Brussels, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg. This makes for a very complicated and expensive track from Brussels to Strasbourg once per month!!
That’s all for now…watch for pictures of the parliament buildings in the future.
