The European Parliament (EP) can be considered the boldest advocate for ever more European integration. Its members (MEPs) have been pushing for broad Community competences in economic, social and financial policy matters from the EP’s first years of existence – a time in which member states struggled to agree on mere political rapprochement in major parts of the above-mentioned areas, and also a time in which the EP had, according to the Communities’ founding treaties, few parliamentary powers. This paper aims to show that despite the minor role assigned to it by the treaties, the EP developed into a de facto co-legislator long before the Single European Act (SEA), the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam, being able to amend Council regulations and directives, and exercising a certain level of control not only over the Commission, but also the Council through non-binding instruments such as questions, which both institutions regularly answered. Different strategies will be assessed through which the MEPs aimed to gain more parliamentary power. Based on these analyses, the paper seeks to refute dominant theories of the EP as a fairly powerless talking shop prior to its first direct elections in 1979, demonstrating that treaty basis and political reality differed remarkably.

This contribution introduces the concept of ‘activism’ to the study of EU supranational institutions and their role in EU policy making and European integration. While long present in studies of the European Court of Justice, ‘activism’ has rarely been examined systematically in the context of analyses of other supranational institutions. This contribution offers a definition of ‘supranational institutional activism’, examines its analytical usefulness in relation to other concepts such as ‘entrepreneurship’ and through the lens of a number of political science and EU integration theories and analytical approaches. The specific analytical insights derived from the disciplines of political science, history and legal scholarship of the twelve articles of this special edition on ‘supranational institutional activism’ are also considered. While the powers and roles of EU supranational institutions have been examined in numerous studies, this article presents a concept that can contribute to a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the contribution of these entities to EU policy making and European integration.

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The European Parliament (EP)today one of the most powerful actors at EU levelwas intended to be a mere consultative assembly at the founding of the European Communities. This article studies the beginnings of the EP's parliamentarization, from its establishment in 1952 to its first direct elections in 1979. The article uses the concept of Europeanization to analyse what ideational, normative and rationalist factors induced MEPsdelegates from the member states' national parliaments at the timeto invest considerable time and effort into an institution that promised no significant political impact, career improvement, or acknowledgement by voters. In so doing, the article demonstrates that despite the fact that careers were made at the national level, MEPs swiftly began to behave as Euro-parliamentarians rather than national delegates. Inside the EP, MEPs were therefore both themselves Europeanized and pushed for the Europeanization of the EP more generally.