title: John Corbett

text: From 2009 to 2011, Corbett co-starred in the Showtime comedy-drama series "United States of Tara" as Max Gregson, the husband of Toni Collette's title character. In 2010, Corbett reprised his role as Aidan Shaw in the "Sex and the City" feature film sequel "Sex and the City 2". That same year, he starred as Tom Marks in the Hallmark seasonal television film "November Christmas", alongside Sam Elliott and Sarah Paulson, and portrayed Robert Quimby in Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum's family comedy film "Ramona and Beezus", based on the "Ramona" novel series. Corbett was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2011.


title: John Corbett

text: From 2011 to 2015, he had a recurring role as Seth Holt on the NBC drama series "Parenthood". In March 2013, Corbett appeared in two episodes of the CBS procedural drama series "" as Special Agent Roy Haines; it was considered to be a planted pilot episode for a spin-off series focusing on his character, but this was ultimately not produced. In 2012, he portrayed teacher Mike Kersjes in the Hallmark television film based on the memoir of the same name, "A Smile as Big as the Moon". Corbett provided the voiceover for Applebee's television commercials and, since 2012, has been the voice for Walgreens' television and radio advertisements. In 2014, Corbett appeared alongside Sarah Bolger in Jeff Probst's drama film "Kiss Me". The following year, he starred as Garrett Peterson, opposite Jennifer Lopez, in the Rob Cohen-directed erotic thriller "The Boy Next Door".


title: John Corbett

text: From 2015 to 2016, he portrayed Josiah "Flash" Bacon in the FX comedy series "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll". In 2016, fourteen years after "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was released, Corbett returned for the sequel "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2". In 2017, he portrayed the main role of Michael Spurlock, a pastor who welcomes Karen refugees to his church, in the Steve Gomer-directed drama film "All Saints". Corbett then had a guest starring role as himself in the eighth and final season of IFC's comedy series "Portlandia". He portrayed Dr. Dan Covey, the father of Lana Condor's lead character, in the film adaptation of Jenny Han's novel "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" (2018), directed by Susan Johnson. Corbett starred in "" (2018), as lawyer Pearce Hill.


title: John Corbett

text: In 2019, Corbett starred in John R. Leonetti's film adaptation of Tim Lebbon's horror novel "The Silence", with Miranda Otto and Stanley Tucci. He also co-starred with Nia Long in the horror sequel "".


title: John Corbett

text: In 1993, Corbett starred in the Jeff Richter-directed music video for the Scorpions single "Woman", opposite Karina Lombard. In September 2004, it was reported that Corbett had signed a recording contract with Nashville-based country music label Broken Bow Records. He released his self-titled debut album, co-produced by D. Scott Miller and Tara Novick, on April 4, 2006, and went on tour with ZZ Top, Lisa Marie Presley, and Charlie Daniels to promote the record. The album's only single, "Good to Go", debuted at No. 48 on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart, which was the highest debut by a new artist from an independent label, and later peaked at No. 43. The music video for "Good to Go" was directed by Kevin Kerslake. The album itself reached No. 45 on the Country Albums chart, and peaked at No. 21 on the Independent Albums chart. In 2008, Corbett was featured in Trisha Yearwood's music video for her single "This Is Me You're Talking To".


title: John Corbett

text: Seven years after his debut, Corbett released a second country album, "Leaving Nothin' Behind", produced by Jon Randall, on January 29, 2013.


title: John Corbett

text: Corbett was raised Catholic and "dabbled" in born-again Christianity in the 1980s "before returning to his Catholic roots." He has been in a relationship with actress Bo Derek since 2002, after meeting on a blind date. They married in December 2020. The couple lives on a ranch in Santa Ynez, California, with their two German Shepherds and four horses.


title: John Mahoney

text: Charles John Mahoney (June 20, 1940 – February 4, 2018) was an English-born American actor. He was known for playing Martin Crane on the NBC sitcom "Frasier" (1993–2004), and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for the role in 2000. Mahoney started his career in Chicago as a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company alongside John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, and Laurie Metcalf. He received the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer in 1986. Later that year, his performance in the Broadway revival of John Guare's "The House of Blue Leaves" earned him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney first became known for his roles in such films as John Patrick Shanley's romantic comedy "Moonstruck" (1987), Barry Levinson's comedy "Tin Men", John Sayles' sports drama "Eight Men Out" (1988), Cameron Crowe's romantic drama "Say Anything..." (1989), the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink" (1991), and "The Hudsucker Proxy" (1994), Clint Eastwood's "In the Line of Fire" (1993), and Rob Reiner's political romance "The American President" (1995). He additionally had voice roles in "Antz" (1998), "The Iron Giant" (1999), "" (2001), and "Kronk's New Groove" (2005). In television, Mahoney also made appearances on "Cheers", "3rd Rock from the Sun", "ER", "In Treatment", "Hot in Cleveland", and "Foyle's War".


title: John Mahoney

text: Charles John Mahoney was born in Blackpool, England on June 20, 1940, the seventh of eight children. His father, Reg, was a baker who played classical piano, and his mother, Margaret (née Watson), was a housewife who loved reading. His paternal grandfather was Irish. The family had been evacuated to Blackpool from their home city of Manchester when it was heavily bombed during the Second World War. Mahoney started school at St Joseph's College. After the war, the family moved back to Manchester, where Mahoney grew up in the suburb of Withington and discovered acting at the Stretford Children's Theatre. His parents' marriage was not happy. They would not speak to each other for long periods of time—and when they did, it often led to heated arguments. The family situation, combined with the war, fueled Mahoney's interest in acting and he vowed to leave Manchester.


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney moved to the United States aged 18 in March 1959, when his older sister Vera (a war bride living in rural Illinois) agreed to sponsor him. He studied at Quincy University before joining the United States Army. After graduating from Quincy, he lived in Macomb, Illinois, and earned his Master's degree in English from Western Illinois University, where he went on to teach English in the late 1960s before settling in Forest Park, Illinois, and later in Oak Park, Illinois. He became a U.S. citizen in 1971 and served as editor of a medical journal through much of the 1970s.


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney made a concerted effort to lose his English accent after joining the U.S. Army, later stating that he felt that he did not want to "stand out" in his new adopted country. He spoke with an American accent for the rest of his life.


title: John Mahoney

text: Dissatisfied with his career, Mahoney took acting classes at St. Nicholas Theatre, which inspired him to resign from his day job and pursue acting full-time. After a stage production in Chicago in 1977, John Malkovich encouraged him to join the Steppenwolf Theatre. He did so and went on to win the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer in 1986. Gary Sinise said in an interview for "Bomb Magazine" that Lyle Kessler's play "Orphans" in 1985 "kicked John Mahoney, Kevin Anderson and Terry Kinney off into the movie business" after their Steppenwolf performance of the play for which he won the Derwent Award and the Theatre World Award. Mahoney won Broadway's Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1986 for his performance in John Guare's "The House of Blue Leaves".


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney's first major film roles both came in 1987, in Barry Levinson's "Tin Men" and in Peter Yates' "Suspect", a courtroom drama/mystery starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson. In the next decade, he had prominent roles in many acclaimed films including "Moonstruck", "Eight Men Out", "Say Anything...", "In the Line of Fire", "Reality Bites", and "The American President", as well as two Coen brothers films, "Barton Fink" and "The Hudsucker Proxy".


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney appeared in "Frasier" from its debut in 1993 until the final episode in 2004; Mahoney received two Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations for the role of Martin Crane, the father of Frasier Crane and Niles Crane. NBC executives held Mahoney in such high esteem that Warren Littlefield declared he was pre-approved when the "Frasier" creative team suggested casting him as the father. Before appearing on the series, Mahoney had appeared in the episode "Do Not Forsake Me, O' My Postman" of "Cheers" – from which "Frasier" was a spinoff – as Sy Flembeck, an inept jingle writer who has a brief conversation with Frasier. Mahoney also appeared as a priest in "Becker", which starred "Cheers" star Ted Danson.


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney's first voice job was in W. B. Yeats's "The Words upon the Window-Pane" for the award-winning National Radio Theater of Chicago. He provided the voices for several characters in "Antz" (1998), Preston Whitmore in "" and "", General Rogard in "The Iron Giant" (1999), and Papi in "Kronk's New Groove" (but was succeeded by Jeff Bennett in "The Emperor's New School" for an unknown reason). In 2007, Mahoney provided the voice of Dr. Robert Terwilliger, Sr. (Sideshow Bob's father) in "The Simpsons" episode "Funeral for a Fiend". This reunited him with his "Frasier" co-stars Kelsey Grammer (Sideshow Bob) and David Hyde Pierce (Cecil, Sideshow Bob's brother).


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney co-starred as the Old Man in the Broadway revival of "Prelude to a Kiss" at the American Airlines Theater in a limited-run engagement running from previews on February 17, 2007, through to April 29, 2007. He appeared as an elderly drag queen in the "ER" season 13 episode "Somebody to Love," and co-starred with Steve Carell (himself a veteran of Chicago theater) as the father of Carell's character in "Dan in Real Life". In March 2008, he opened in the world premiere of "Better Late" at the Northlight Theatre. He was also the narrator for Midwest Airlines commercials. Mahoney also made two appearances on USA's "Burn Notice" in the second (2009) and third (2010) season finales. His character, referred to only as "Management," is a senior intelligence agency official who is the apparent main mover of the conspiracy which blacklisted Michael Westen.


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney joined the cast of "In Treatment" for the series' second season (2009) as a frenetic CEO who is overwhelmed by his personal and professional responsibilities and experiences chronic physical anxiety attacks. In 2010, he made a guest appearance on "$#*! My Dad Says" as homophobic retired naval officer Lt. Commander Wally Durham.


title: John Mahoney

text: Beginning in April 2011, Mahoney began rehearsing "The Outgoing Tide", a new play by Bruce Graham at Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Illinois (suburban Chicago). The play also stars fellow "Chicago" actors Rondi Reed and Thom Cox. In 2011, he had two guest appearances on "Hot in Cleveland" as Roy, a waiter and a love interest for Betty White's character Elka. This reunited him with his "Frasier" co-star Jane Leeves, as well as Wendie Malick whose character he eventually married in "Frasier" and his co-star in the movie "The American President". Mahoney was a featured ensemble cast member in "The Birthday Party", playing in Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre from January 24 to April 28, 2013. Mahoney portrayed his last role in the play "The Rembrandt", from September to November 2017.


title: John Mahoney

text: Despite the numerous successes throughout his career, Mahoney has maintained that his early work in Lyle Kessler's play "Orphans" has "affected people more than any other play I've ever done. I still get mail from it, I still get people stopping me on the street, and it's 20 years later."


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney lived in Oak Park, Illinois, and suffered from colon cancer in the mid-1980s. He was successfully treated for cancer again in 2014, and credited his love of acting and desire to continue it for giving him enough determination to survive both bouts, saying in October 2017: "I refused to yield to it because I love what I'm doing so much."


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney rarely spoke publicly about his private life, and he died without marrying or having any children. In 2002, he said, "I was never very mature in my relationships with women. First sign of conflict, I was gone. Wouldn't discuss it, because I was afraid it would lead to an argument." This stemmed from a fear of having an unhappy marriage like the one his parents had, though Mahoney did previously have "several long-term relationships".


title: John Mahoney

text: He was a Catholic who called Christianity "probably the most important facet of my life" and prayed "Most glorious blessed spirit, I thank you for all the gifts and talents that you've given me. Please help me to use all these gifts and talents to their fullest. And please accept this performance as a prayer of praise and thanks to you," prior to each of his performances. Mahoney would also say prayers upon waking up and before going to sleep daily, and would repeatedly pray "Dear God, please help me to treat everybody – including myself – with love, respect, and dignity."


title: John Mahoney

text: Mahoney died in a Chicago hospice on February 4, 2018, due to complications from throat cancer, originally diagnosed in 2014. He was 77 years old. According to his friend Anna D. Shapiro, "He was fragile and he was supposed to be having a routine procedure. But having just beat Stage 3 throat cancer, I think he was just too weak... by the time he did "The Rembrandt" [a play at Steppenwolf Theatre] he was clean of cancer... but other health issues came up and he was just too fragile."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová; May 15, 1937 – March 23, 2022) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 64th United States secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Albright was the first woman to hold that post.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Albright immigrated to the United States after the 1948 communist coup d'état when she was eleven years old. Her father, diplomat Josef Korbel, settled the family in Denver, Colorado, and she became a U.S. citizen in 1957. Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 and earned a PhD from Columbia University in 1975, writing her thesis on the Prague Spring. She worked as an aide to Senator Edmund Muskie from 1976 to 1978, before serving as a staff member on the National Security Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski. She served in that position until 1981, when President Jimmy Carter left office.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: After leaving the National Security Council, Albright joined the academic faculty of Georgetown University in 1982 and advised Democratic candidates regarding foreign policy. Following the 1992 presidential election, Albright helped assemble President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. She was appointed United States ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997, a position she held until elevation as secretary of state. Secretary Albright served in that capacity until President Clinton left office in 2001.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright served as chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm, and was the Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in May 2012. Albright served on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová in 1937 in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her parents were Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat, and Anna Korbel (née Spieglová). At the time of Albright's birth, Czechoslovakia had been independent for less than 20 years, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. Her father was a supporter of Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Marie Jana had a younger sister Katherine and a younger brother John (these versions of their names are Anglicized).


title: Madeleine Albright

text: When Marie Jana was born, her father was serving as a press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. The signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938—and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia by Adolf Hitler's troops—forced the family into exile because of their links with Beneš.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Josef and Anna converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1941. Marie Jana and her siblings were raised in the Roman Catholic faith. In 1997, Albright said her parents never told her or her two siblings about their Jewish ancestry and heritage.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: The family moved to Britain in May 1939. Here her father worked for Beneš's Czechoslovak government-in-exile. Her family first lived on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London—where they endured the worst of the Blitz—but later moved to Beaconsfield, then Walton-on-Thames, on the outskirts of London. They kept a large metal table in the house, which was intended to shelter the family from the recurring threat of German air raids. While in England, Marie Jana was one of the children shown in a documentary film designed to promote sympathy for war refugees in London.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: After the defeat of the Nazis in the European theatre of World War II and the collapse of Nazi Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Korbel family returned to Prague. Korbel was appointed as press attaché at Czechoslovakian Embassy in Yugoslavia, and the family moved to Belgrade—then part of Yugoslavia—which was governed by the Communist Party. Korbel was concerned his daughter would be exposed to Marxism in a Yugoslav school, and so she was taught privately by a governess before being sent to the Prealpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles finishing school in Chexbres, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. She learned to speak French while in Switzerland and changed her name from Marie Jana to Madeleine.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took over the government in 1948, with support from the Soviet Union. As an opponent of communism, Korbel was forced to resign from his position. He later obtained a position on a United Nations delegation to Kashmir. He sent his family to the United States, by way of London, to wait for him when he arrived to deliver his report to the UN Headquarters, then located in Lake Success, New York.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Korbel's family emigrated from the United Kingdom on the SS "America", departing Southampton on November 5, 1948, and arriving at Ellis Island in New York Harbor on November 11, 1948. The family initially settled in Great Neck on the North Shore of Long Island. Korbel applied for political asylum, arguing that as an opponent of Communism, he was under threat in Prague. Korbel stated "I cannot, of course, return to the Communist Czechoslovakia as I would be arrested for my faithful adherence to the ideals of democracy. I would be most obliged to you if you could kindly convey to his Excellency the Secretary of State that I beg of him to be granted the right to stay in the United States, the same right to be given to my wife and three children."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: With the help of Philip Moseley, a Russian language professor at Columbia University in New York City, Korbel obtained a position on the staff of the political science department at the University of Denver in Colorado. He became dean of the university's school of international relations, and later taught future U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The school was named the Josef Korbel School of International Studies in 2008 in his honor.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Madeleine Korbel spent her teen years in Denver and in 1955 graduated from the Kent Denver School in Cherry Hills Village, a suburb of Denver. She founded the school's international relations club and was its first president. She attended Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on a full scholarship, majoring in political science, and graduated in 1959. The topic of her senior thesis was Zdeněk Fierlinger, a former Czechoslovakian prime minister. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957, and joined the College Democrats of America.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: While home in Denver from Wellesley, Korbel worked as an intern for "The Denver Post". There she met Joseph Albright. He was the nephew of Alicia Patterson, owner of "Newsday" and wife of philanthropist Harry Frank Guggenheim. Korbel converted to the Episcopal Church at the time of her marriage. The couple were married in Wellesley in 1959, shortly after her graduation. They lived in Rolla, Missouri, while Joseph completed his military service at nearby Fort Leonard Wood. During this time, Albright worked at "The Rolla Daily News".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: The couple moved to Joseph's hometown of Chicago, Illinois, in January 1960. Joseph worked at the "Chicago Sun-Times" as a journalist, and Albright worked as a picture editor for "Encyclopædia Britannica". The following year, Joseph Albright began work at "Newsday" in New York City, and the couple moved to Garden City on Long Island. That year, she gave birth to twin daughters, Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright. The twins were born six weeks premature and required a long hospital stay. As a distraction, Albright began Russian language classes at Hofstra University in the Village of Hempstead nearby.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In 1962, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where they lived in Georgetown. Albright studied international relations and continued in Russian at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, a division of Johns Hopkins University in the capital.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Joseph's aunt Alicia Patterson died in 1963, and the Albrights returned to Long Island with the notion of Joseph taking over the family newspaper business. Albright gave birth to another daughter, Katharine Medill Albright, in 1967. She continued her studies at Columbia University's Department of Public Law and Government. (It was later renamed as the political science department, and is located within the School of International and Public Affairs.) She earned a certificate in Russian from the Russian Institute (now Harriman Institute), an M.A. and a PhD, writing her master's thesis on the Soviet diplomatic corps and her doctoral dissertation on the role of journalists in the Prague Spring of 1968. She also took a graduate course given by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later became her boss at the U.S. National Security Council.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright returned to Washington, D.C., in 1968, and commuted to Columbia for her doctor of philosophy, which she earned in 1975. She began fund-raising for her daughters' school, involvement which led to several positions on education boards. She was eventually invited to organize a fund-raising dinner for the 1972 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. This association with Muskie led to a position as his chief legislative assistant in 1976. However, after the 1976 U.S. presidential election of Jimmy Carter, Albright's former professor Brzezinski was named National Security Advisor, and recruited Albright from Muskie in 1978 to work in the West Wing as the National Security Council's congressional liaison. Following Carter's loss in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, Albright moved on to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where she was given a grant for a research project. She chose to write on the dissident journalists involved in Poland's Solidarity movement, then in its infancy but gaining international attention. She traveled to Poland for her research, interviewing dissidents in Gdańsk, Warsaw, and Kraków. Upon her return to Washington, her husband announced his intention to divorce her so that he could pursue a relationship with another woman; the divorce was finalized in 1983.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright joined the academic staff at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982, specializing in Eastern European studies. She also directed the university's program on women in global politics. She served as a major Democratic Party foreign policy advisor, briefing vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 (both campaigns ended in defeat). In 1992, Bill Clinton returned the White House to the Democratic Party, and Albright was employed to handle the transition to a new administration at the National Security Council. In January 1993, Clinton nominated her to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, her first diplomatic posting.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright was appointed ambassador to the United Nations, a Cabinet-level position, shortly after Clinton was inaugurated, presenting her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her tenure at the U.N., she had a rocky relationship with the U.N. secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom she criticized as "disengaged" and "neglect[ful]" of genocide in Rwanda. Albright wrote: "My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In "Shake Hands with the Devil", Roméo Dallaire writes that in 1994, in Albright's role as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., she avoided describing the killings in Rwanda as "genocide" until overwhelmed by the evidence for it; this is now how she described these massacres in her memoirs. She was instructed to support a reduction or withdrawal (something which never happened) of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda but was later given more flexibility. Albright later remarked in PBS documentary "Ghosts of Rwanda" that "it was a very, very difficult time, and the situation was unclear. You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But when you were [there] at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Also in 1996, after Cuban military pilots shot down two small civilian aircraft flown by the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue over international waters, she announced at a UN Security Council meeting debating a resolution condemning Cuba: "This is not "cojones". This is cowardice." The line endeared her to President Clinton, who said it was "probably the most effective one-liner in the whole administration's foreign policy". When Albright appeared at a memorial service for the deceased in Miami on March 2, 1996, she was greeted with chants of "libertad".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In 1996, Albright entered into a secret pact with Richard Clarke, Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin to overthrow U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term in the 1996 selection. After 15 U.S. peacekeepers died in a failed raid in Somalia in 1993, Boutros-Ghali became a political scapegoat in the United States. They dubbed the pact "Operation Orient Express" to reflect their hope that other nations would join the United States. Although every other member of the United Nations Security Council voted for Boutros-Ghali, the United States refused to yield to international pressure to drop its lone veto. After four deadlocked meetings of the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali suspended his candidacy and became the only U.N. secretary-general ever to be denied a second term. The United States then fought a four-round veto duel with France, forcing it to back down and accept Kofi Annan as the next secretary-general. In his memoirs, Clarke said that "the entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: When Clinton began his second term in January 1997, following his re-election, he required a new Secretary of State, as incumbent Warren Christopher was retiring. The top level of the Clinton administration was divided into two camps on selecting the new foreign policy. Outgoing Chief of Staff Leon Panetta favored Albright, but a separate faction went for different candidates such as Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Albright orchestrated a campaign on her own behalf that proved successful. When Albright took office as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, she became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at the time of her appointment. Not being a natural-born citizen of the U.S., she was not eligible as a U.S. presidential successor.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: During her tenure, Albright considerably influenced American foreign policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Middle East. Following the Dayton Agreement, in which a cease-fire in the Bosnian War was reached, President Clinton committed to sending American troops to Bosnia to enforce the agreement, as strongly recommended by Albright. According to Albright's memoirs, she once argued with Colin Powell for the use of military force by asking, "What's the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can't use it?" Albright strongly advocated for U.S. economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: As Secretary of State, she represented the U.S. at the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997. She along with the British contingents boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of the Chinese-appointed Hong Kong Legislative Council, which replaced the elected one. In October 1997, she voiced her approval for national security exemptions to the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that NATO operations should not be limited by controls on greenhouse gas emissions, and hoped that other NATO members would also support the exemptions at the in Kyoto, Japan.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: According to several accounts, Prudence Bushnell, U.S. ambassador to Kenya, repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in a letter directly addressed to Albright in April 1998. Bushnell was ignored. She later stated that when she spoke to Albright about the letter, Albright told her that it had not been shown to her. In "Against All Enemies", Richard Clarke writes about an exchange with Albright several months after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. "What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?" Clarke asked. "The Republicans in Congress will go after you." "First of all, I didn't lose these two embassies", Albright shot back. "I inherited them in the shape they were."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In 1998, at the NATO summit, Albright articulated what became known as the "three Ds" of NATO, "which is no diminution of NATO, no discrimination and no duplication – because I think that we don't need any of those three "Ds" to happen".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In February 1998, Albright partook in a town-hall style meeting at St. John Arena in Columbus where she, William Cohen, and Sandy Berger attempted to make the case for military action in Iraq. The crowd was disruptive, repeatedly drowning out the discussion with boos and anti-war chants. James Rubin downplayed the disruptions, claiming the crowd was supportive of a war policy. Later that year, both Bill Clinton and Albright insisted that an attack on Saddam Hussein could be stopped only if Hussein reversed his decision to halt arms inspections.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In an interview on The Today Show, February 19, 1998, Albright said "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future..."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright became one of the highest level Western diplomats ever to meet Kim Jong-il, the then-leader of communist North Korea, during an official state visit to that country in 2000.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: On January 8, 2001, in one of her last acts as Secretary of State, Albright made a farewell call to Kofi Annan and said that the U.S. would continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions, even after the end of the Clinton administration on January 20, 2001.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright received the U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards Foundation, in 2001.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Following Albright's term as Secretary of State, Czech president Václav Havel spoke openly about the possibility of Albright succeeding him. Albright was reportedly flattered, but denied ever seriously considering the possibility of running for office in her country of origin.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. Also that year, Albright founded the Albright Group, an international strategy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. that later become the Albright Stonebridge Group. Affiliated with the firm is Albright Capital Management, which was founded in 2005 to engage in private fund management related to emerging markets.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright accepted a position on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 2003. In 2005, she declined to run for re-election to the board in the aftermath of the Richard Grasso compensation scandal, in which Grasso, the chairman of the NYSE board of directors, had been granted $187.5 million in compensation, with little governance by the board on which Albright sat. During the tenure of the interim chairman, John S. Reed, Albright served as chairwoman of the NYSE board's nominating and governance committee. Shortly after the appointment of the NYSE board's permanent chairman in 2005, Albright submitted her resignation. According to "PolitiFact", Albright opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, although after the U.S. was committed to the war, she said she would support the President.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright served on the board of directors for the Council on Foreign Relations and on the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Doha Center. As of 2016, she was the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Albright served as chairperson of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. She was also the co-chair of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor and was the chairwoman of the Council of Women World Leaders "Women's Ministerial Initiative" up until November 16, 2007, when she was succeeded by Margot Wallström.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: She also made a guest appearance on "Parks and Recreation", in the eighth episode of the seventh season.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: At the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on November 13, 2007, Albright declared that she and William Cohen would co-chair a new Genocide Prevention Task Force created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute for Peace. Their appointment was criticized by Harut Sassounian and the Armenian National Committee of America, as both Albright and Cohen had spoken against a Congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright endorsed and supported Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign. Albright was a close friend of Clinton and served as an informal advisor on foreign policy matters. On December 1, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama nominated then-Senator Clinton for Albright's former post of Secretary of State.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In September 2009, Albright opened an exhibition of her personal jewelry collection at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, which ran until January 2010. In 2009, Albright also published the book "Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box" about her pins.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In August 2012, when speaking at an Obama campaign event in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Albright was asked the question "How long will you blame that previous administration for all of your problems?", to which she replied "Forever". In October 2012, Albright appeared in a video on the official Twitter feed for the Democratic Party, responding to then-GOP candidate Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia was the "number-one geopolitical foe" of the United States. According to Albright, Romney's statement was proof that he had "little understanding of what was actually going on in the 21st Century [and] he is not up to date and that is a very dangerous aspect [of his candidacy]".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright described Donald Trump as "the most un-American, anti-democratic leader" in U.S. history. She also criticized the Trump administration for its delay in filling some diplomatic posts as a sign of "disdain for diplomacy".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: After 2016, Albright served as chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm, and chair of the advisory council for The Hague Institute for Global Justice, which was founded in 2011 in The Hague. She also served as an Honorary Chair for the World Justice Project (WJP). The WJP works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright was a co-investor with Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, and George Soros in a $350 million investment vehicle called Helios Towers Africa, which intends to buy or build thousands of mobile phone towers in Africa.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: On May 12, 1996, then-ambassador Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a "60 Minutes" segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her, "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it." The segment won an Emmy Award. Albright later criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda", saying that her question was a loaded question. She wrote, "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean", and that she regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel". She apologized for her remarks in a 2020 interview with "The New York Times", calling them "totally stupid".


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions more than doubled Iraq's child mortality rate, research following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has shown that commonly cited data were fabricated by the Iraqi government and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions". Albright addressed the controversy at length in a 2020 memoir: "In fact, the producers of "60 Minutes" were duped. Subsequent research has shown that Iraqi propagandists deceived international observers ... Per a 2017 article in the "British Medical Journal of Global Health", the data 'were rigged to show a huge and sustained—and largely non-existent—rise in child mortality ... to heighten international concern and so get the international sanctions ended.' ... This is not to deny that UN sanctions contributed to hardships in Iraq or to say that my answer to Stahl's question wasn't a mistake. They did, and it was. ... U.S. policy throughout the 1990s was to prevent Iraq from reconstituting its most dangerous weapons programs. Short of another war, UN sanctions were the best means for doing so."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Following "The Washington Post"s profile of Albright by Michael Dobbs, an Austrian man named Philipp Harmer launched legal action against Albright, claiming her father had illegally taken possession of artwork that belonged to his great-grandfather, Karl Nebrich. Nebrich, a German-speaking Prague industrialist, abandoned some of the possessions in his apartment when ethnic Germans were expelled from the country after World War II under the Beneš decrees. His apartment, at 11 Hradčanská Street in Prague, was subsequently given to Korbel and his family. Harmer alleged that Korbel stole his great-grandfather's artwork. Counsel for Albright's family stated that Hammer's claim was unfounded.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In late October 2012, during a book signing in the Prague bookstore Palác Knih Luxor, Albright was visited by a group of activists from the Czech organization Přátelé Srbů na Kosovu (Friends of Serbs in Kosovo). She was filmed saying, "Disgusting Serbs, get out!" to the Czech group, which had brought war photos to the signing, some of which showed Serbian victims of the Kosovo War in 1999. The protesters were expelled from the event when police arrived. Two videos of the incident were later posted by the group on their YouTube channel. Filmmaker Emir Kusturica expressed thanks to Czech director Václav Dvořák for organizing and participating in the demonstration. Together with other protesters, Dvořák also reported Albright to the police, stating that she was spreading ethnic hatred and disrespect to the victims of the war.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright's involvement in the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia was the main cause of the demonstration – a sensitive topic which became even more controversial when it was revealed that in 2012 her investment firm, Albright Capital Management, was preparing to bid in the proposed privatization of Kosovo's state-owned telecom and postal company, Post and Telecom of Kosovo. In an article published by the New York City-based magazine "Bloomberg Businessweek", it was estimated that the deal could be as large as €600 million. Serbia opposed the sale, and intended to file a lawsuit to block it, alleging that the rights of former Serbian employees were not respected. The bid never happened and was withdrawn by her investment fund.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright supported Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. While introducing Clinton at a campaign event in New Hampshire ahead of that state's primary, Albright said, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other" (a phrase Albright had used on several previous occasions in other contexts). The remark was seen as a rebuke of younger women who supported Clinton's primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, which many women found "startling and offensive". In a "New York Times" op-ed published several days after the remark, Albright said: "I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line. I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based solely on gender."


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright held honorary degrees from Brandeis University (1996), the University of Washington (2002), Smith College (2003), Washington University in St. Louis (2003), University of Winnipeg (2005), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007), Knox College (2008), Bowdoin College (2013),


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In 1998, Albright was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Albright was the second recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented by the Prague Society for International Cooperation. In March 2000 Albright received an Honorary Silver Medal of Jan Masaryk at a ceremony in Prague sponsored by the Bohemian Foundation and the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright was selected for the inaugural 2021 Forbes 50 Over 50; made up of entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists, and creators who are over the age of 50.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright married Joseph Albright in 1959. The couple had three daughters before divorcing in 1982. She had been raised Roman Catholic, but converted to the Episcopal Church upon her marriage in 1959. Her parents had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1941 during her early childhood, while still in Czechoslovakia, to avoid anti-Jewish persecution before they immigrated to the U.S. They never discussed their Jewish ancestry with her later.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: When "The Washington Post" reported on Albright's Jewish ancestry shortly after she had become Secretary of State in 1997, Albright said that the report was a "major surprise". Albright said that she did not learn until age 59 that both her parents were born and raised in Jewish families. As many as a dozen of her relatives in Czechoslovakia—including three of her grandparents—had been murdered in the Holocaust.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: In addition to English, Russian, and Czech, Albright spoke French, German, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian. She also understood spoken Slovak.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright mentioned her physical fitness and exercise regimen in several interviews. In 2006, she said she was capable of leg pressing . Albright was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by "The Guardian" in March 2013.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Albright died from cancer in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2022, at the age of 84. Many political figures paid tribute to her, including U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and former British prime minister Tony Blair.


title: Madeleine Albright

text: Her funeral, held at Washington National Cathedral on April 27, was attended by President Joe Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice as well as president of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili and president of Kosovo Vjosa Osmani.


title: European Parliament

text: The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India), with an electorate of 375 million eligible voters in 2009.


title: European Parliament

text: Since 1979, the Parliament has been directly elected every five years by the citizens of the European Union through universal suffrage. Voter turnout in parliamentary elections decreased each time after 1979 until 2019, when voter turnout increased by eight percentage points, and rose above 50% for the first time since 1994. The voting age is 18 in all EU member states except for Malta and Austria, where it is 16, and Greece, where it is 17.


title: European Parliament

text: Although the European Parliament has legislative power, as does the Council, it does not formally possess the right of initiative as most national parliaments of the member states do, with the right of initiative being solely a prerogative of the European Commission. The Parliament is the "first institution" of the European Union (mentioned first in its treaties and having ceremonial precedence over the other EU institutions), and shares equal legislative and budgetary powers with the Council (except on a few issues where special legislative procedures apply). It likewise has equal control over the EU budget. Ultimately, the European Commission, which serves as the executive branch of the EU, is accountable to Parliament. In particular, Parliament can decide whether or not to approve the European Council's nominee for President of the Commission, and is further tasked with approving (or rejecting) the appointment of the Commission as a whole. It can subsequently force the current Commission to resign by adopting a motion of censure.


title: European Parliament

text: The president of the European Parliament is the body's speaker and presides over the multi-party chamber. The five largest political groups are the European People's Party Group (EPP), the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew Europe (previously ALDE), the Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) and Identity and Democracy (ID). The last EU-wide election was held in 2019.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament is headquartered in Strasbourg, France, and has its administrative offices in Luxembourg City. Plenary sessions take place in Strasbourg as well as in Brussels, Belgium, while the Parliament's committee meetings are held primarily in Brussels.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament, like the other EU institutions, was not designed in its current form when it first met on 10 September 1952. One of the oldest common institutions, it began as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It was a consultative assembly of 78 appointed parliamentarians drawn from the national parliaments of member states, having no legislative powers. The change since its foundation was highlighted by Professor David Farrell of the University of Manchester: "For much of its life, the European Parliament could have been justly labelled a 'multi-lingual talking shop'."


title: European Parliament

text: Its development since its foundation shows how the European Union's structures have evolved without a clear 'master plan'. Tom Reid of "The Washington Post" has said of the union that "nobody would have deliberately designed a government as complex and as redundant as the EU". Even the Parliament's two seats, which have switched several times, are a result of various agreements or lack of agreements. Although most MEPs would prefer to be based just in Brussels, at John Major's 1992 Edinburgh summit, France engineered a treaty amendment to maintain Parliament's plenary seat permanently at Strasbourg.


title: European Parliament

text: The body was not mentioned in the original Schuman Declaration. It was assumed or hoped that difficulties with the British would be resolved to allow the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to perform legislative tasks. A separate Assembly was introduced during negotiations on the Treaty as an institution to counterbalance and monitor the executive while providing democratic legitimacy. The wording of the ECSC Treaty demonstrated leaders' desire for more than a normal consultative assembly by allowing for direct election and using the term "representatives of the people". Its early importance was highlighted when the Assembly was given the task of drawing up the draft treaty to establish a European Political Community. By this document, the Ad Hoc Assembly was established on 13 September 1952 with extra members, but after the failure of the negotiated and proposed European Defence Community (French parliament veto), the project was dropped.


title: European Parliament

text: Despite this, the European Economic Community and Euratom were established in 1958 by the Treaties of Rome. The Common Assembly was shared by all three communities (which had separate executives) and it renamed itself the European Parliamentary Assembly. The first meeting was held on 19 March 1958 having been set up in Luxembourg City, it elected Schuman as its president and on 13 May it rearranged itself to sit according to political ideology rather than nationality. This is seen as the birth of the modern European Parliament, with Parliament's 50 years celebrations being held in March 2008 rather than 2002.


title: European Parliament

text: The three communities merged their remaining organs as the European Communities in 1967, and the body's name was changed to the current "European Parliament" in 1962. In 1970 the Parliament was granted power over areas of the Communities' budget, which were expanded to the whole budget in 1975. Under the Rome Treaties, the Parliament should have become elected. However, the Council was required to agree a uniform voting system beforehand, which it failed to do. The Parliament threatened to take the Council to the European Court of Justice; this led to a compromise whereby the Council would agree to elections, but the issue of voting systems would be put off until a later date.


title: European Parliament

text: For its sessions the assembly, and later the parliament, until 1999 convened in the same premises as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: the House of Europe


title: European Parliament

text: In 1979, its members were directly elected for the first time. This sets it apart from similar institutions such as those of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe or Pan-African Parliament which are appointed. After that first election, the parliament held its first session on 17 July 1979, electing Simone Veil MEP as its president. Veil was also the first female president of the Parliament since it was formed as the Common Assembly.


title: European Parliament

text: As an elected body, the Parliament began to draft proposals addressing the functioning of the EU. For example, in 1984, inspired by its previous work on the Political Community, it drafted the "draft Treaty establishing the European Union" (also known as the 'Spinelli Plan' after its rapporteur Altiero Spinelli MEP). Although it was not adopted, many ideas were later implemented by other treaties. Furthermore, the Parliament began holding votes on proposed Commission Presidents from the 1980s, before it was given any formal right to veto.


title: European Parliament

text: Since it became an elected body, the membership of the European Parliament has simply expanded whenever new nations have joined (the membership was also adjusted upwards in 1994 after German reunification). Following this, the Treaty of Nice imposed a cap on the number of members to be elected: 732.


title: European Parliament

text: Like the other institutions, the Parliament's seat was not yet fixed. The provisional arrangements placed Parliament in Strasbourg, while the Commission and Council had their seats in Brussels. In 1985 the Parliament, wishing to be closer to these institutions, built a second chamber in Brussels and moved some of its work there despite protests from some states. A final agreement was eventually reached by the European Council in 1992. It stated the Parliament would retain its formal seat in Strasbourg, where twelve sessions a year would be held, but with all other parliamentary activity in Brussels. This two-seat arrangement was contested by the Parliament, but was later enshrined in the Treaty of Amsterdam. To this day the institution's locations are a source of contention.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament gained more powers from successive treaties, namely through the extension of the ordinary legislative procedure (then called the codecision procedure), and in 1999, the Parliament forced the resignation of the Santer Commission. The Parliament had refused to approve the Community budget over allegations of fraud and mis-management in the Commission. The two main parties took on a government-opposition dynamic for the first time during the crisis which ended in the Commission resigning en masse, the first of any forced resignation, in the face of an impending censure from the Parliament.


title: European Parliament

text: In 2004, following the largest trans-national election in history, despite the European Council choosing a President from the largest political group (the EPP), the Parliament again exerted pressure on the Commission. During the Parliament's hearings of the proposed Commissioners MEPs raised doubts about some nominees with the Civil Liberties committee rejecting Rocco Buttiglione from the post of Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security over his views on homosexuality. That was the first time the Parliament had ever voted against an incoming Commissioner and despite Barroso's insistence upon Buttiglione the Parliament forced Buttiglione to be withdrawn. A number of other Commissioners also had to be withdrawn or reassigned before Parliament allowed the Barroso Commission to take office.


title: European Parliament

text: Along with the extension of the ordinary legislative procedure, the Parliament's democratic mandate has given it greater control over legislation against the other institutions. In voting on the Bolkestein directive in 2006, the Parliament voted by a large majority for over 400 amendments that changed the fundamental principle of the law. The "Financial Times" described it in the following terms:


title: European Parliament

text: In 2007, for the first time, Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini included Parliament in talks on the second Schengen Information System even though MEPs only needed to be consulted on parts of the package. After that experiment, Frattini indicated he would like to include Parliament in all justice and criminal matters, informally pre-empting the new powers they were due to gain in 2009 as part of the Treaty of Lisbon. Between 2007 and 2009, a special working group on parliamentary reform implemented a series of changes to modernise the institution such as more speaking time for rapporteurs, increased committee co-operation and other efficiency reforms.


title: European Parliament

text: The Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December 2009, granting Parliament powers over the entire EU budget, making Parliament's legislative powers equal to the Council's in nearly all areas and linking the appointment of the Commission President to Parliament's own elections. Barroso gained the support of the European Council for a second term and secured majority support from the Parliament in September 2009. Parliament voted 382 votes in favour and 219 votes against (117 abstentions) with support of the European People's Party, European Conservatives and Reformists and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. The liberals gave support after Barroso gave them a number of concessions; the liberals previously joined the socialists' call for a delayed vote (the EPP had wanted to approve Barroso in July of that year).


title: European Parliament

text: Once Barroso put forward the candidates for his next Commission, another opportunity to gain concessions arose. Bulgarian nominee Rumiana Jeleva was forced to step down by Parliament due to concerns over her experience and financial interests. She only had the support of the EPP which began to retaliate on left wing candidates before Jeleva gave in and was replaced (setting back the final vote further).


title: European Parliament

text: Before the final vote, Parliament demanded a number of concessions as part of a future working agreement under the new Lisbon Treaty. The deal includes that Parliament's President will attend high level Commission meetings. Parliament will have a seat in the EU's Commission-led international negotiations and have a right to information on agreements. However, Parliament secured only an observer seat. Parliament also did not secure a say over the appointment of delegation heads and special representatives for foreign policy. Although they will appear before parliament after they have been appointed by the High Representative. One major internal power was that Parliament wanted a pledge from the Commission that it would put forward legislation when parliament requests. Barroso considered this an infringement on the Commission's powers but did agree to respond within three months. Most requests are already responded to positively.


title: European Parliament

text: During the setting up of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Parliament used its control over the EU budget to influence the shape of the EEAS. MEPs had aimed at getting greater oversight over the EEAS by linking it to the Commission and having political deputies to the High Representative. MEPs didn't manage to get everything they demanded. However, they got broader financial control over the new body.


title: European Parliament

text: In December 2017, Politico denounced the lack of racial diversity among Members of the European Parliament. The subsequent news coverage contributed to create the Brussels So White movement.


title: European Parliament

text: In January 2019, Conservative MEPs supported proposals to boost opportunities for women and tackle sexual harassment in the European Parliament.


title: European Parliament

text: In 2022, four people were arrested because of corruption. This came to be known as the Qatar corruption scandal at the European Parliament.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament and Council have been compared to the two chambers of a bicameral legislature. However, there are some differences from national legislatures; for example, neither the Parliament nor the Council have the power of legislative initiative (except for the fact that the Council has the power in some intergovernmental matters). In Community matters, this is a power uniquely reserved for the European Commission (the executive). Therefore, while Parliament can amend and reject legislation, to make a proposal for legislation, it needs the Commission to draft a bill before anything can become law. The value of such a power has been questioned by noting that in the national legislatures of the member states 85% of initiatives introduced without executive support fail to become law. Yet it has been argued by former Parliament president Hans-Gert Pöttering that as the Parliament does have the right to ask the Commission to draft such legislation, and as the Commission is following Parliament's proposals more and more Parliament does have a "de facto" right of legislative initiative.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament also has a great deal of indirect influence, through non-binding resolutions and committee hearings, as a "pan-European soapbox" with the ear of thousands of Brussels-based journalists. There is also an indirect effect on foreign policy; the Parliament must approve all development grants, including those overseas. For example, the support for post-war Iraq reconstruction, or incentives for the cessation of Iranian nuclear development, must be supported by the Parliament. Parliamentary support was also required for the transatlantic passenger data-sharing deal with the United States. Finally, Parliament holds a non-binding vote on new EU treaties but cannot veto it. However, when Parliament threatened to vote down the Nice Treaty, the Belgian and Italian Parliaments said they would veto the treaty on the European Parliament's behalf.


title: European Parliament

text: With each new treaty, the powers of the Parliament, in terms of its role in the Union's legislative procedures, have expanded. The procedure which has slowly become dominant is the "ordinary legislative procedure" (previously named "codecision procedure"), which provides an equal footing between Parliament and Council. In particular, under the procedure, the Commission presents a proposal to Parliament and the Council which can only become law if both agree on a text, which they do (or not) through successive readings up to a maximum of three. In its first reading, Parliament may send amendments to the Council which can either adopt the text with those amendments or send back a "common position". That position may either be approved by Parliament, or it may reject the text by an absolute majority, causing it to fail, or it may adopt further amendments, also by an absolute majority. If the Council does not approve these, then a "Conciliation Committee" is formed. The Committee is composed of the Council members plus an equal number of MEPs who seek to agree a compromise. Once a position is agreed, it has to be approved by Parliament, by a simple majority. This is also aided by Parliament's mandate as the only directly democratic institution, which has given it leeway to have greater control over legislation than other institutions, for example over its changes to the Bolkestein directive in 2006.


title: European Parliament

text: The few other areas that operate the "special legislative procedures" are justice and home affairs, budget and taxation, and certain aspects of other policy areas, such as the fiscal aspects of environmental policy. In these areas, the Council or Parliament decide law alone. The procedure also depends upon which type of institutional act is being used. The strongest act is a regulation, an act or law which is directly applicable in its entirety. Then there are directives which bind member states to certain goals which they must achieve. They do this through their own laws and hence have room to manoeuvre in deciding upon them. A decision is an instrument which is focused at a particular person or group and is directly applicable. Institutions may also issue recommendations and opinions which are merely non-binding, declarations. There is a further document which does not follow normal procedures, this is a "written declaration" which is similar to an early day motion used in the Westminster system. It is a document proposed by up to five MEPs on a matter within the EU's activities used to launch a debate on that subject. Having been posted outside the entrance to the hemicycle, members can sign the declaration and if a majority do so it is forwarded to the President and announced to the plenary before being forwarded to the other institutions and formally noted in the minutes.


title: European Parliament

text: The legislative branch officially holds the Union's budgetary authority with powers gained through the Budgetary Treaties of the 1970s and the Lisbon Treaty. The EU budget is subject to a form of the ordinary legislative procedure with a single reading giving Parliament power over the entire budget (before 2009, its influence was limited to certain areas) on an equal footing to the Council. If there is a disagreement between them, it is taken to a conciliation committee as it is for legislative proposals. If the joint conciliation text is not approved, the Parliament may adopt the budget definitively.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament is also responsible for discharging the implementation of previous budgets based on the annual report of the European Court of Auditors. It has refused to approve the budget only twice, in 1984 and in 1998. On the latter occasion it led to the resignation of the Santer Commission; highlighting how the budgetary power gives Parliament a great deal of power over the Commission. Parliament also makes extensive use of its budgetary, and other powers, elsewhere; for example in the setting up of the European External Action Service, Parliament has a de facto veto over its design as it has to approve the budgetary and staff changes.


title: European Parliament

text: The President of the European Commission is proposed by the European Council on the basis of the European elections to Parliament. That proposal has to be approved by the Parliament (by a simple majority) who "elect" the President according to the treaties. Following the approval of the Commission President, the members of the Commission are proposed by the President in accord with the member states. Each Commissioner comes before a relevant parliamentary committee hearing covering the proposed portfolio. They are then, as a body, approved or rejected by the Parliament.


title: European Parliament

text: In practice, the Parliament has never voted against a President or his Commission, but it did seem likely when the Barroso Commission was put forward. The resulting pressure forced the proposal to be withdrawn and changed to be more acceptable to parliament. That pressure was seen as an important sign by some of the evolving nature of the Parliament and its ability to make the Commission accountable, rather than being a rubber stamp for candidates. Furthermore, in voting on the Commission, MEPs also voted along party lines, rather than national lines, despite frequent pressure from national governments on their MEPs. This cohesion and willingness to use the Parliament's power ensured greater attention from national leaders, other institutions and the public who previously gave the lowest ever turnout for the Parliament's elections.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament also has the power to censure the Commission if they have a two-thirds majority which will force the resignation of the entire Commission from office. As with approval, this power has never been used but it was threatened to the Santer Commission, who subsequently resigned of their own accord. There are a few other controls, such as: the requirement of Commission to submit reports to the Parliament and answer questions from MEPs; the requirement of the President-in-office of the Council to present its programme at the start of their presidency; the obligation on the President of the European Council to report to Parliament after each of its meetings; the right of MEPs to make requests for legislation and policy to the Commission; and the right to question members of those institutions (e.g. "Commission Question Time" every Tuesday). At present, MEPs may ask a question on any topic whatsoever, but in July 2008 MEPs voted to limit questions to those within the EU's mandate and ban offensive or personal questions.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament also has other powers of general supervision, mainly granted by the Maastricht Treaty. The Parliament has the power to set up a Committee of Inquiry, for example over mad cow disease or CIA detention flights the former led to the creation of the European veterinary agency. The Parliament can call other institutions to answer questions and if necessary to take them to court if they break EU law or treaties. Furthermore, it has powers over the appointment of the members of the Court of Auditors and the president and executive board of the European Central Bank. The ECB president is also obliged to present an annual report to the parliament.


title: European Parliament

text: The European Ombudsman is elected by the Parliament, who deals with public complaints against all institutions. Petitions can also be brought forward by any EU citizen on a matter within the EU's sphere of activities. The Committee on Petitions hears cases, some 1500 each year, sometimes presented by the citizen themselves at the Parliament. While the Parliament attempts to resolve the issue as a mediator they do resort to legal proceedings if it is necessary to resolve the citizens dispute.


title: European Parliament

text: The parliamentarians are known in English as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). They are elected every five years by universal adult suffrage and sit according to political allegiance; about one third are women. Before the first direct elections, in 1979, they were appointed by their national parliaments.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament has been criticized for underrepresentation of minority groups. In 2017, an estimated 17 MEPs were nonwhite, and of these, three were black, a disproportionately low number. According to activist organization European Network Against Racism, while an estimated 10% of Europe is composed of racial and ethnic minorities, only 5% of MEPs were members of such groups following the 2019 European Parliament election.


title: European Parliament

text: Under the Lisbon Treaty, seats are allocated to each state according to population and the maximum number of members is set at 751 (however, as the President cannot vote while in the chair there will only be 750 voting members at any one time). Since 1 February 2020, 705 MEPs (including the president of the Parliament) sit in the European Parliament, the reduction in size due to the United Kingdom leaving the EU.


title: European Parliament

text: Representation is currently limited to a maximum of 96 seats and a minimum of 6 seats per state and the seats are distributed according to "degressive proportionality", i.e., the larger the state, the more citizens are represented per MEP. As a result, Maltese and Luxembourgish voters have roughly 10x more influence per voter than citizens of the six largest countries.


title: European Parliament

text: , Germany (80.9 million inhabitants) has 96 seats (previously 99 seats), i.e. one seat for 843,000 inhabitants. Malta (0.4 million inhabitants) has 6 seats, i.e. one seat for 70,000 inhabitants.


title: European Parliament

text: The new system implemented under the Lisbon Treaty, including revising the seating well before elections, was intended to avoid political horse trading when the allocations have to be revised to reflect demographic changes.


title: European Parliament

text: Pursuant to this apportionment, the constituencies are formed. In four EU member states (Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Poland), the national territory is divided into a number of constituencies. In the remaining member states, the whole country forms a single constituency. All member states hold elections to the European Parliament using various forms of proportional representation.


title: European Parliament

text: Due to the delay in ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, the seventh parliament was elected under the lower Nice Treaty cap. A small scale treaty amendment was ratified on 29 November 2011. This amendment brought in transitional provisions to allow the 18 additional MEPs created under the Lisbon Treaty to be elected or appointed before the 2014 election. Under the Lisbon Treaty reforms, Germany was the only state to lose members from 99 to 96. However, these seats were not removed until the 2014 election.


title: European Parliament

text: Before 2009, members received the same salary as members of their national parliament. However, from 2009 a new members statute came into force, after years of attempts, which gave all members an equal monthly pay, of €8,484.05 each in 2016, subject to a European Union tax and which can also be taxed nationally. MEPs are entitled to a pension, paid by Parliament, from the age of 63. Members are also entitled to allowances for office costs and subsistence, and travelling expenses, based on actual cost. Besides their pay, members are granted a number of privileges and immunities. To ensure their free movement to and from the Parliament, they are accorded by their own states the facilities accorded to senior officials travelling abroad and, by other state governments, the status of visiting foreign representatives. When in their own state, they have all the immunities accorded to national parliamentarians, and, in other states, they have immunity from detention and legal proceedings. However, immunity cannot be claimed when a member is found committing a criminal offence and the Parliament also has the right to strip a member of their immunity.


title: European Parliament

text: MEPs in Parliament are organised into eight different parliamentary groups, including thirty non-attached members known as "non-inscrits". The two largest groups are the European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D). These two groups have dominated the Parliament for much of its life, continuously holding between 50 and 70 percent of the seats between them. No single group has ever held a majority in Parliament. As a result of being broad alliances of national parties, European group parties are very decentralised and hence have more in common with parties in federal states like Germany or the United States than unitary states like the majority of the EU states. Nevertheless, the European groups were actually more cohesive than their US counterparts between 2004 and 2009.


title: European Parliament

text: Groups are often based on a single European political party such as the European People's Party. However, they can, like the liberal group, include more than one European party as well as national parties and independents. For a group to be recognised, it needs 23 MEPs from seven different countries. Groups receive funding from the parliament.


title: European Parliament

text: Given that the Parliament does not form the government in the traditional sense of a Parliamentary system, its politics have developed along more consensual lines with dynamical coalitions rather than majority rule of competing parties and coalitions. Indeed, for much of its life it has been dominated by a grand coalition of the European People's Party and the Party of European Socialists. The two major parties tend to co-operate to find a compromise between their two groups leading to proposals endorsed by huge majorities. However, this does not always produce agreement, and each may instead try to build other alliances, the EPP normally with other centre-right or right wing Groups and the PES with centre-left or left wing groups. Sometimes, the Liberal Group is then in the pivotal position. There are also occasions where very sharp party political divisions have emerged, for example over the resignation of the Santer Commission.


title: European Parliament

text: When the initial allegations against the Commission emerged, they were directed primarily against Édith Cresson and Manuel Marín, both socialist members. When the parliament was considering refusing to discharge the Community budget, President Jacques Santer stated that a no vote would be tantamount to a vote of no confidence. The Socialist group supported the Commission and saw the issue as an attempt by the EPP to discredit their party ahead of the 1999 elections. Socialist leader, Pauline Green MEP, attempted a vote of confidence and the EPP put forward counter motions. During this period the two parties took on similar roles to a government-opposition dynamic, with the Socialists supporting the executive and EPP renouncing its previous coalition support and voting it down. Politicisation such as this has been increasing, in 2007 Simon Hix of the London School of Economics noted that:


title: European Parliament

text: During the fifth term, 1999 to 2004, there was a break in the grand coalition resulting in a centre-right coalition between the Liberal and People's parties. This was reflected in the Presidency of the Parliament with the terms being shared between the EPP and the ELDR, rather than the EPP and Socialists. In the following term the liberal group grew to hold 88 seats, the largest number of seats held by any third party in Parliament. The EPP-S&D coalition lost their majority after the 2019 European Parliament election, requiring support by other political groups for a majority.


title: European Parliament

text: Elections have taken place, directly in every member state, every five years since 1979. there have been nine elections. When a nation joins mid-term, a by-election will be held to elect their representatives. This has happened six times, most recently when Croatia joined in 2013. Elections take place across four days according to local custom and, apart from having to be proportional, the electoral system is chosen by the member state. This includes allocation of sub-national constituencies; while most members have a national list, some divide their allocation between regions. Seats are allocated to member states according to their population, since 2014 with no state having more than 96, but no fewer than 6, to maintain proportionality.


title: European Parliament

text: The most recent Union-wide elections to the European Parliament were the European elections of 2019, held from 23 to 26 May 2019. They were the largest simultaneous transnational elections ever held anywhere in the world.


title: European Parliament

text: European political parties have the exclusive right to campaign during the European elections (as opposed to their corresponding EP groups). There have been a number of proposals designed to attract greater public attention to the elections. One such innovation in the 2014 elections was that the pan-European political parties fielded "candidates" for president of the Commission, the so-called "Spitzenkandidaten" (German, "leading candidates" or "top candidates"). However, European Union governance is based on a mixture of intergovernmental and supranational features: the President of the European Commission is nominated by the European Council, representing the governments of the member states, and there is no obligation for them to nominate the successful "candidate". The Lisbon Treaty merely states that they should take account of the results of the elections when choosing whom to nominate. The so-called "Spitzenkandidaten" were Jean-Claude Juncker for the European People's Party, Martin Schulz for the Party of European Socialists, Guy Verhofstadt for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, Ska Keller and José Bové jointly for the European Green Party and Alexis Tsipras for the Party of the European Left.


title: European Parliament

text: Turnout dropped consistently every year since the first election, and from 1999 until 2019 was below 50%. In 2007 both Bulgaria and Romania elected their MEPs in by-elections, having joined at the beginning of 2007. The Bulgarian and Romanian elections saw two of the lowest turnouts for European elections, just 28.6% and 28.3% respectively. This trend was interrupted in the 2019 election, when turnout increased by 8% EU-wide, rising to 50.6%, the highest since 1994.


title: European Parliament

text: In England, Scotland and Wales, EP elections were originally held for a constituency MEP on a first-past-the-post basis. In 1999 the system was changed to a form of proportional representation where a large group of candidates stand for a post within a very large regional constituency. One could vote for a party, but not a candidate (unless that party had a single candidate).


title: European Parliament

text: Each year the activities of the Parliament cycle between committee weeks where reports are discussed in committees and interparliamentary delegations meet, political group weeks for members to discuss work within their political groups and session weeks where members spend 3½ days in Strasbourg for part-sessions. In addition six 2-day part-sessions are organised in Brussels throughout the year. Four weeks are allocated as constituency week to allow members to do exclusively constituency work. Finally there are no meetings planned during the summer weeks. The Parliament has the power to meet without being convened by another authority. Its meetings are partly controlled by the treaties but are otherwise up to Parliament according to its own "Rules of Procedure" (the regulations governing the parliament).


title: European Parliament

text: During sessions, members may speak after being called on by the President. Members of the Council or Commission may also attend and speak in debates. Partly due to the need for interpretation, and the politics of consensus in the chamber, debates tend to be calmer and more polite than, say, the Westminster system. Voting is conducted primarily by a show of hands, that may be checked on request by electronic voting. Votes of MEPs are not recorded in either case, however; that only occurs when there is a roll-call ballot. This is required for the final votes on legislation and also whenever a political group or 30 MEPs request it. The number of roll-call votes has increased with time. Votes can also be a completely secret ballot (for example, when the president is elected). All recorded votes, along with minutes and legislation, are recorded in the "Official Journal of the European Union" and can be accessed online. Votes usually do not follow a debate, but rather they are grouped with other due votes on specific occasions, usually at noon on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays. This is because the length of the vote is unpredictable and if it continues for longer than allocated it can disrupt other debates and meetings later in the day.


title: European Parliament

text: Members are arranged in a hemicycle according to their political groups (in the Common Assembly, prior to 1958, members sat alphabetically) who are ordered mainly by left to right, but some smaller groups are placed towards the outer ring of the Parliament. All desks are equipped with microphones, headphones for translation and electronic voting equipment. The leaders of the groups sit on the front benches at the centre, and in the very centre is a podium for guest speakers. The remaining half of the circular chamber is primarily composed of the raised area where the President and staff sit. Further benches are provided between the sides of this area and the MEPs, these are taken up by the Council on the far left and the Commission on the far right. Both the Brussels and Strasbourg hemicycle roughly follow this layout with only minor differences. The hemicycle design is a compromise between the different Parliamentary systems. The British-based system has the different groups directly facing each other while the French-based system is a semicircle (and the traditional German system had all members in rows facing a rostrum for speeches). Although the design is mainly based on a semicircle, the opposite ends of the spectrum do still face each other. With access to the chamber limited, entrance is controlled by ushers who aid MEPs in the chamber (for example in delivering documents). The ushers can also occasionally act as a form of police in enforcing the President, for example in ejecting an MEP who is disrupting the session (although this is rare). The first head of protocol in the Parliament was French, so many of the duties in the Parliament are based on the French model first developed following the French Revolution. The 180 ushers are highly visible in the Parliament, dressed in black tails and wearing a silver chain, and are recruited in the same manner as the European civil service. The President is allocated a personal usher.


title: European Parliament

text: The President is essentially the speaker of the Parliament and presides over the plenary when it is in session. The President's signature is required for all acts adopted by co-decision, including the EU budget. The President is also responsible for representing the Parliament externally, including in legal matters, and for the application of the rules of procedure. The President is elected for two-and-a-half-year terms, meaning two elections per parliamentary term. The current President of the European Parliament is Roberta Metsola, who was elected in January 2022.


title: European Parliament

text: In most countries, the protocol of the head of state comes before all others; however, in the EU the Parliament is listed as the first institution, and hence the protocol of its president comes before any other European, or national, protocol. The gifts given to numerous visiting dignitaries depend upon the President. President Josep Borrell MEP of Spain gave his counterparts a crystal cup created by an artist from Barcelona who had engraved upon it parts of the Charter of Fundamental Rights among other things.


title: European Parliament

text: A number of notable figures have been President of the Parliament and its predecessors. The first President was Paul-Henri Spaak MEP, one of the founding fathers of the Union. Other founding fathers include Alcide de Gasperi MEP and Robert Schuman MEP. The two female Presidents were Simone Veil MEP in 1979 (first President of the elected Parliament) and Nicole Fontaine MEP in 1999, both Frenchwomen. The previous president, Jerzy Buzek was the first East-Central European to lead an EU institution, a former Prime Minister of Poland who rose out of the Solidarity movement in Poland that helped overthrow communism in the Eastern Bloc.


title: European Parliament

text: During the election of a President, the previous President (or, if unable to, one of the previous Vice-Presidents) presides over the chamber. Prior to 2009, the oldest member fulfilled this role but the rule was changed to prevent far-right French MEP Jean-Marie Le Pen taking the chair.


title: European Parliament

text: Below the President, there are 14 Vice-Presidents who chair debates when the President is not in the chamber. There are a number of other bodies and posts responsible for the running of parliament besides these speakers. The two main bodies are the Bureau, which is responsible for budgetary and administration issues, and the Conference of Presidents which is a governing body composed of the presidents of each of the parliament's political groups. Looking after the financial and administrative interests of members are five Quaestors.


title: European Parliament

text: , the European Parliament budget was EUR 1.756 billion. A 2008 report on the Parliament's finances highlighted certain overspending and miss-payments. Despite some MEPs calling for the report to be published, Parliamentary authorities had refused until an MEP broke confidentiality and leaked it.


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament has 20 Standing Committees consisting of 25 to 73 MEPs each (reflecting the political make-up of the whole Parliament) including a chair, a bureau and secretariat. They meet twice a month in public to draw up, amend to adopt legislative proposals and reports to be presented to the plenary. The rapporteurs for a committee are supposed to present the view of the committee, although notably this has not always been the case. In the events leading to the resignation of the Santer Commission, the rapporteur went against the Budgetary Control Committee's narrow vote to discharge the budget, and urged the Parliament to reject it.


title: European Parliament

text: Committees can also set up sub-committees (e.g. the Subcommittee on Human Rights) and temporary committees to deal with a specific topic (e.g. on extraordinary rendition). The chairs of the Committees co-ordinate their work through the "Conference of Committee Chairmen". When co-decision was introduced it increased the Parliament's powers in a number of areas, but most notably those covered by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. Previously this committee was considered by MEPs as a "Cinderella committee"; however, as it gained a new importance, it became more professional and rigorous, attracting increasing attention to its work.


title: European Parliament

text: The nature of the committees differ from their national counterparts as, although smaller in comparison to those of the United States Congress, the European Parliament's committees are unusually large by European standards with between eight and twelve dedicated members of staff and three to four support staff. Considerable administration, archives and research resources are also at the disposal of the whole Parliament when needed.


title: European Parliament

text: Delegations of the Parliament are formed in a similar manner and are responsible for relations with Parliaments outside the EU. There are 34 delegations made up of around 15 MEPs, chairpersons of the delegations also cooperate in a conference like the committee chairs do. They include "Interparliamentary delegations" (maintain relations with Parliament outside the EU), "joint parliamentary committees" (maintaining relations with parliaments of states which are candidates or associates of the EU), the delegation to the ACP EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and the delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly. MEPs also participate in other international activities such as the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly, the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue and through election observation in third countries.


title: European Parliament

text: The Intergroups in the European Parliament are informal fora which gather MEPs from various political groups around any topic. They do not express the view of the European Parliament. They serve a double purpose: to address a topic which is transversal to several committees and in a less formal manner. Their daily secretariat can be run either through the office of MEPs or through interest groups, be them corporate lobbies or NGOs. The favored access to MEPs which the organization running the secretariat enjoys can be one explanation to the multiplication of Intergroups in the 1990s. They are now strictly regulated and financial support, direct or otherwise (via Secretariat staff, for example) must be officially specified in a declaration of financial interests. Also Intergroups are established or renewed at the beginning of each legislature through a specific process. Indeed, the proposal for the constitution or renewal of an Intergroup must be supported by at least 3 political groups whose support is limited to a specific number of proposals in proportion to their size (for example, for the legislature 2014-2019, the EPP or S&D political groups could support 22 proposals whereas the Greens/EFA or the EFDD political groups only 7).


title: European Parliament

text: Speakers in the European Parliament are entitled to speak in any of the 24 official languages of the European Union, ranging from French and German to Maltese and Irish. Simultaneous interpreting is offered in all plenary sessions, and all final texts of legislation are translated. With twenty-four languages, the European Parliament is the most multilingual parliament in the world and the biggest employer of interpreters in the world (employing 350 full-time and 400 free-lancers when there is higher demand). Citizens may also address the Parliament in Basque, Catalan/Valencian and Galician.


title: European Parliament

text: Usually a language is translated from a foreign tongue into a translator's native tongue. Due to the large number of languages, some being minor ones, since 1995 interpreting is sometimes done the opposite way, out of an interpreter's native tongue (the "retour" system). In addition, a speech in a minor language may be interpreted through a third language for lack of interpreters ("relay" interpreting) for example, when interpreting out of Estonian into Maltese. Due to the complexity of the issues, interpretation is not word for word. Instead, interpreters have to convey the political meaning of a speech, regardless of their own views. This requires detailed understanding of the politics and terms of the Parliament, involving a great deal of preparation beforehand (e.g. reading the documents in question). Difficulty can often arise when MEPs use profanities, jokes and word play or speak too fast.


title: European Parliament

text: While some see speaking their native language as an important part of their identity, and can speak more fluently in debates, interpretation and its cost has been criticised by some. A 2006 report by Alexander Stubb MEP highlighted that by only using English, French and German costs could be reduced from €118,000 per day (for 21 languages then Romanian, Bulgarian and Croatian having not yet been included) to €8,900 per day. There has also been a small-scale campaign to make French the reference language for all legal texts, on the basis of an argument that it is more clear and precise for legal purposes.


title: European Parliament

text: Because the proceedings are translated into all of the official EU languages, they have been used to make a multilingual corpus known as Europarl. It is widely used to train statistical machine translation systems.


title: European Parliament

text: According to the European Parliament website, the annual parliament budget for 2021 was €2.064 billion, which corresponds to 1.2% of EU budget. The main cost categories were:


title: European Parliament

text: According to a European Parliament study prepared in 2013, the Strasbourg seat costs an extra €103 million over maintaining a single location and according to the Court of Auditors an additional €5 million is related to travel expenses caused by having two seats.


title: European Parliament

text: As a comparison, the German lower house of parliament (Bundestag) is estimated to cost €517 million in total for 2018, for a parliament with 709 members. The British House of Commons reported total annual costs in 2016-2017 of £249 million (€279 million). It had 650 seats.


title: European Parliament

text: According to "The Economist", the European Parliament costs more than the British, French and German parliaments combined. A quarter of the costs is estimated to be related to translation and interpretation costs (c. €460 million) and the double seats are estimated to add an additional €180 million a year. For a like-for-like comparison, these two cost blocks can be excluded.


title: European Parliament

text: On 2 July 2018, MEPs rejected proposals to tighten the rules around the General Expenditure Allowance (GEA), which "is a controversial €4,416 per month payment that MEPs are given to cover office and other expenses, but they are not required to provide any evidence of how the money is spent".


title: European Parliament

text: The Parliament is based in three different cities with numerous buildings. A protocol attached to the Treaty of Amsterdam requires that 12 plenary sessions be held in Strasbourg (none in August but two in September), which is the Parliament's official seat, while extra part sessions as well as committee meetings are held in Brussels. Luxembourg City hosts the Secretariat of the European Parliament. The European Parliament is one of at least two assemblies in the world with more than one meeting place (another being the parliament of the Isle of Man, Tynwald) and one of the few that does not have the power to decide its own location.