First direct election to the European Parliament - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1979 - 50 Pfennig

The European Parliament (EP) is one of the four institutions of the European Community - Council, Commission, European Parliament, European Court of Justice. According to the terms of the founding treaties, it represents the peoples of the nine states that have joined together to form the European Community. In its present form, the EP began its work on 1 January 1958 with the entry into force of the Treaty of Rome. It emerged from the "Common Assembly" of the Coal and Steel Community. The EP holds its plenary sessions in Strasbourg and Luxembourg, most of the committee meetings in Brussels, with MEPs not sitting and working by nationality, but in multinational groups. The EP has an advisory role in Community legislation and exercises important powers of control, in particular in budgetary matters. So far, the EP is made up of 198 MEPs seconded from among the national parliaments. The Community act adopted on 20 September 1976, calling for direct universal suffrage by Members of the EP, brings about a 20-year old contractual and political commitment. Its essential content is that, as of 1978, around 180 million European citizens entitled to vote will be able to vote for a single, yet unified election date for 410 members of the European Parliament. The European Parliament will in future comprise 81 British, German, French, Italian and 25 Dutch, 24 Belgian, 16 Danish, 15 Irish and 6 Luxembourg national representatives. The realization of the constitutional mandate of a direct election enshrined in the Treaty of Rome is based on three basic ideas: - According to our understanding of democracy, the institutions of a European union include a parliament, which must emerge from free and direct elections. - The European Community needs an institution in which European consciousness and political will can be formed and articulated across national borders. European party unions indicate this development. - The European Community can not be governed permanently by ministers from the Member States' cabinets and the Commission and its officials alone. This requires an active democratic participation of the European citizen in the activities of the Community through the representatives to be elected by him. The democratization of the community initiated by direct elections will give new momentum to the European unification movement. (Text: Federal Foreign Office, Bonn)