• its name ( Europäisches Parlament in German , Europees Parlement in Dutch ) evoked a relationship with the democratic legitimacy of national parliamentary assemblies ;
• its composition , made up of European political families ( Christian Democrat , liberal and socialist ) and not of national delegations , thus evoking the transnational foundation of 19th-century political cultures , conceived from Christian universalism , liberal cosmopolitanism and socialist internationalism ;
• the mandate given to it by the foreign ministers of the six founding members to draw up the statute , i . e . the constitution , of the European Political Community , as the political and democratic framework necessary for the birth of the European Defence Community .
After the birth of the European Communities through the 1957 Treaties of Rome , the assemblies of the ECSC , the European Economic Community ( EEC ) and the European Atomic Energy Community ( EURATOM ) were merged . This enlarged Assembly met for the first time in Strasbourg on 19 March 1958 and decided , on 30 March 1962 , to take on the name of European Parliament – as Fernand Dehousse put it , ‘ destined to one day become a real Parliament ’.
The Treaties stipulated that ‘ the Assembly shall draw up drafts for the purpose of permitting election by universal and direct suffrage in accordance with a uniform procedure in all member states ’ ( Article 2 of the Convention on certain institutions common to the European Communities and Article 138 of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community ). Relying on the power conferred on it by the Treaties , the European Parliament fulfilled its mission as early as 17 May 1960 and after two years of preparatory work , by approving a draft convention for the direct election of its members .
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