The European Commission's Role in the Legislative Process

The European Parliament has a role together with the Member States to nominate and to have confirmed a new president of the European Commission. Once that Commission is established, it has a obligation, not a legal one under the treaties, but a sort of political obligation to lay out its five-year mission. What it then breaks that down to is then and what's called an annual legislative programme. It presents a programme of work for the following calendar year saying these are the areas that we think are important. And once that process has been finished, then the draft legislation which initiated maybe, you know, up to a year or longer before from the Commission then gets to the point of being signed off as law