The Council is not even legally obliged to listen to representations from the European Parliament (Letter to Stoke Sentinel, January 2005)
On most legislation originating in the EU, the European Parliament has equal decision-making power with the Council of Ministers, for example in the areas of the environment, consumer protection, health & safety, transport or creating the single market across the EU.
More than 20 different UK ministers attended debates either at committee level or in the full European Parliament in the course of the UK Presidency in 2005. There is a link to the speeches and debates at http://www.europarl.org.uk/presidency/. This is the practice for all EU Presidencies and is the case for the current Austrian Presidency.
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