http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9c74a530-8f77-11d9-af70-00000e2511c8.html

(wow, shortest topic title ever)

"All in all it?s just another brick in the wall."

Now, these are really no good news, but this is also not the end of the world. They just changed the rules we have to play with.

Quite frankly, I'm surprised the parliament is still against this law. I would have expected them to break down long ago.

Me, too. But they seem to develop their own identity as a parliament lately, which is overdue. Hopefully it will become more exciting, than those boring nationalist parliaments in europe, where single Representatives are nothing more than placeholders for their parties most of the time. I like the idea of political-parties, but a bit more autonomy by party-members would be fine, too.

The interesting thing about the European parliament is that there aren't 'the' parties present, but lots of different ones from different countries which do have loose bonds to similar ones, but nothing more. What still needs to be sorted out is the question of what that parliament can decide, and what's in the power of the commission. The latter definitely has way too much influence to be called democratic...

Agreed. Hopefully the new european constitution will change this in a better way. But I have to admit, I still haven't read it, since I don't have to decide about it (directly).