Features - all

The EU adopted over the past decade several regulations to protect the rights of passengers travelling by plane, train, ship or bus. Today it wants to clarify and better enforce air passenger rights and ensure consistent application of different passenger rights regulations in the future.

The European Citizens' Initiative is set to become a reality from 1 April 2012, enabling citizens for the first time to ask for EU legislation on specific issues provided they gather one million signatures in support. In the words of Parliament president Martin Schulz, it is "a wonderful thing", but also a very serious act of direct participatory democracy that comes after a decade-long gestation.

Are European Union countries, still facing economic crises, ready to support the ambitious EU 2020 growth strategy, or will it get tangled up in the claims of member states preoccupied by what they contribute to the budget and what they get back? And, if they do come up with a budget to support the 2020 targets, what will happen to traditional policy areas? These issues will be tackled when the EU negotiates its long-term budget, the so-called multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2014-2020.

The EP has dedicated this year's International Women's Day to the theme "equal pay for equal work" as women in the EU are still on average paid 17% less then men. Slovakian Christian-Democrat MEP Edit Bauer, author of a report on how to close the gender pay gap, said more needed to be done about this: "Progress is extremely slow".

In autumn 2010 the EU agreed to tighten financial supervision in the private sector in an effort to head off any future financial crisis. A year later the public sector was under the spotlight as the EP tackled dangerous imbalances in EU economies and considered new rules meant to limit the growth of debt and deficits in the member states. On 28 September 2011 MEPs finally approved the so-called "six- pack" of new rules. Read on to find out more about its passage through Parliament.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has proved to be controversial ever since it was first proposed. The agreement is aimed at more effectively enforcing intellectual property rights on an international level. Many developed countries worry that their economies suffer great damage due to counterfeiting and piracy. However, opponents are concerned that it will favour large companies' interests at the expense of citizens' rights.

The mortgage market is not only of vital importance to the millions of European families who currently are repaying their mortgages but also to the many potential first times buyers who wish to enter the European property market. However, irresponsible lending and borrowing practices have contributed to the current financial and economic crisis. New legislation currently making its way through the European Parliament aims to make the mortgage market more stable.

It looks set to be a busy 12 months for MEPs with the economic crisis continuing, a raft of energy and transport issues on the agenda and negotiations on reforming the Common Agriculture Policy.

EP President Jerzy Buzek announced 27 October that five Arab Spring activists will be awarded the 2011 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for their contribution to historic changes in the Arab world and as a "symbol for all those working for dignity, democracy and fundamental rights in the Arab world and beyond". The prize was awarded on 14 December during a formal sitting in Strasbourg.

The European Parliament is almost half way through its seventh term and it has been quite a turbulent two and a half years with the economic crisis. As we reach the mid-point between elections we look back at some of the key legislation approved by MEPs, including the economic governance 6-pack, financial supervision, wide-ranging consumer protection rules and passenger rights.