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Introduction
There is still some work to do on improving the
general understanding of the institutional de-
sign of the European Union’s political frame-
work in view of the many official or unofficial
institutions and the abuse of the intergovern-
mental method over the last few years. Even so,
the Union has a conceptual design comparable
to any national democracy, although it does
have certain differences that warrant an expla-
nation.
The European Parliament, for its part, as the
expression of European popular sovereignty,
performs a central role in the oversight of the
executive branch, as well as in the legislative
process. Even so, the notion of a Parliament
with few duties, limited areas of intervention
and handicapped by the absence of legislative
initiative lives on in the collective imagination.
Yet since the Lisbon Treaty took effect the role
of the Parliament has ranked equally with that
of any national legislative arm, albeit with cer-
tain peculiarities that we will analyse below.
Nonetheless, the Eurozone economic crisis has
driven a substantial part of the integration seen
over the past few years outside the community
method, with an increasingly marked presence
of the European Council and, therefore, of the
Eurogroup. All that has reshaped the institu-
tional framework.
In this article we will first present a brief
summary of the Union’s political and institution-
al framework to provide an accurate picture of
the European Parliament’s role within it and its
relationship with the Commission, but especially
The European Parliament and
its initiative and oversight
capacity. The political agenda
of the European Council and
the Eurogroup
Jonás Fernández Álvarez