Treaty changes
The first elected European Parliament launched an ambitious initiative by putting forward a proposal to replace the European Community treaties with a new treaty on European union . Parliament took its lead from Altiero Spinelli , one of the founders of the federalist movement at the end of the Second World War , a former resistance leader and former member of the Commission who was elected to Parliament as an independent from a list put forward by the reformed Italian Communist Party . Spinelli hoped that a proposal agreed by a large majority of Europe ’ s political parties , as represented in Parliament , would carry weight and have momentum .
That strategy worked , to a degree . It did not result in Parliament ’ s draft treaty being ratified as such , nor even for negotiations to be based upon it ( despite several national parliaments and governments calling for that ), but it did lead to the convening of an intergovernmental conference ( IGC ), the procedure for revising the existing treaties . The European Council , meeting in June 1985 in Milan , decided by an unprecedented majority vote to convene an IGC , with the UK ( Margaret Thatcher ), Denmark and Greece voting against . The three recalcitrant Member States were eventually willing to negotiate compromises rather than be isolated .
The result fell well short of what Parliament had proposed in its draft treaty . But it did increase the areas of European responsibility , extend QMV and give Parliament some , albeit limited , legislative power for the first time , by creating two new procedures : the cooperation procedure and the consent procedure . The cooperation procedure made provision for a second reading in which Parliament could approve , amend or reject the Council ’ s position . A parliamentary rejection , or amendments that were also backed by the Commission , could only be overruled by the Council .
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