first elected European Parliament rejected the Council ’ s draft budget for the 1980 financial year on 13 December 1979 , using that ‘ negative ’ power that had been granted to Parliament in 1975 .
That vote of peaceful institutional insurrection set in motion Parliament ’ s main political activity between 1980 and 1984 , as it drove the evolution from the European Communities to the European Union , based on the idea that successful political action is achieved by combining the content of a project , the choice of a method and the commitment to an agenda .
It is worth recalling that three events had marked the European integration process in the years leading up to the election by universal and direct suffrage in June 1979 , when the parliament of a political community of nine Member States was created , :
• the establishment of the European Council in 1974 on the initiative of Valéry Giscard d ’ Estaing ;
• the launch of the European Monetary System ( EMS ), also on the initiative of Giscard d ’ Estaing ;
• the decision to elect the European Parliament by universal and direct suffrage .
It was , above all , the creation of the EMS , with its constraints on national economic policies , and the change in the democratic nature of the European Parliament that laid the foundations for the core work of Members of the European Parliament ( MEPs ) during the first parliamentary term , during which the integration process took a historic turn towards political unity .
Despite the intrinsic limitations of the EMS , its creation was a significant political act . This was in part owing to the commitments of the countries that had agreed to be part of it , as well
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