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Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
On this day 65 years ago, the European Parliamentary Assembly met for the first time, according to what was stated in a tweet published by the European Parliament headquarters in Brussels, accompanied by a video of the first session held by the supreme legislative institution in the unified European bloc.
It is one of the three bodies representing the legislative power of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. The European Parliament legislates together with the Council of the European Union, usually on the proposal of the European Commission. Parliament consists of 705 Members (MEPs) elected by direct election. It represents the second largest electoral democracy in the world (after the Indian Parliament) and the largest transnational democratic constituency in the world (375 million eligible voters in 2009). It is described as one of the most powerful legislative bodies in the world.

Parliament has been directly elected every five years by universal suffrage since 1979 by citizens of the European Union. The 1979 elections witnessed the highest voter turnout, after which it continued to decline until 2019, when it rose by eight percentage points to exceed 50% for the first time since the 1994 European Parliament elections.

Although the European Parliament has legislative power [to vote on bills], it does not have the legislative initiative [power to propose bills] that the national parliaments of EU member states have. The Parliament is the first institution of the European Union and has ceremonial and formal [protocol] precedence over all other powers at the European level, and shares equal shares in the legislative power, and in the common budget of the Union with the European Council (with some exceptions in special cases relating to the legislative aspect). Finally, the European Commission - which is the executive arm of the European Union - is accountable to Parliament.
The President of the European Parliament presides over the debates and activities of the Parliament. It also represents Parliament within the European Union and internationally. The signature of the president is required to enact most EU laws and budgets. The president's term is two and a half years, usually divided between the two major political parties. As of 2018 there have been thirty presidents since the establishment of parliament in 1952, fifteen of whom have served since the first parliamentary elections in 1979. Two of them have been women. The current president is Roberta Metsola of Malta.

A number of prominent personalities assumed the presidency of Parliament. The first President of the Joint Assembly was Paul-Henri Spack, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, of whom a number of such as Alcide de Gaspery and Robert Schumann held this position. Three women also held this position: Simone Fay in 1979 (she is the first elected speaker of parliament), Nicole Fontaine in 1999, both of whom are French, and Roberta Metsola from Malta. "currently "
The Speaker of Parliament in 2009, Jerzy Buzek, was the first person from Eastern and Central Europe to take over the leadership of one of the institutions of the European Union. He also previously assumed the prime minister of Poland and is descended from the Solidarity movement that helped overthrow communism in the Eastern Bloc.