I don't know where you are from, but at least in Slovenia if you see someone running for EU parliament you know he is basically retiring from politics.
EU parliament has no actual power, EU is basically ran by EC and ECB.
There has been plenty of movement between the EU parliament and the national parliament in Finland.
As an institution, the EU parliament has real power. It's just that citizens are not particularly interested in what it does, and the media consequently does not report that much about it.
The core issue is that being a MEP looks like a career dead end to an invididual politician. While national MPs have less power, they enjoy more media attention. And if you are an MP for a major party, you have a real chance of becoming a minister. The same pathway does not work in the EU parliament, because commissioners are nominated by national governments rather than selected from MEPs.
I don't know why people expect EU to be some kind of strong do-it-all central government. Maybe it's a side effect of looking from far away like we look at China. But it was always a loose confederation with members retaining most of the power.
jltsiren|11 months ago
As an institution, the EU parliament has real power. It's just that citizens are not particularly interested in what it does, and the media consequently does not report that much about it.
The core issue is that being a MEP looks like a career dead end to an invididual politician. While national MPs have less power, they enjoy more media attention. And if you are an MP for a major party, you have a real chance of becoming a minister. The same pathway does not work in the EU parliament, because commissioners are nominated by national governments rather than selected from MEPs.
foobarian|11 months ago