The term "unanimity" refers to the requirement for all the Member States meeting in the Council to be in agreement before a proposal can be adopted. Since the Single European Act, the unanimity requirement has applied in a much more limited area than before. In the context of the first pillar, voting by qualified majority is now the rule. The second and third pillars, however, still operate exclusively according to the intergovernmental method and the unanimity requirement.
Article 138 of the EC Treaty requires the European Parliament to draw up proposals for elections by direct universal suffrage in accordance with a uniform procedure in all Member States. Such a procedure would ensure that the different European political tendencies were more faithfully represented in Parliament. Any concrete proposals made in the past have foundered on national electoral traditions.
At present the number of seats in Parliament allocated to each country is a compromise between the actual demographic situation and equality between Member States in the shape of over-representation of the least populous. In order to safeguard the effectiveness of Parliament in an enlarged Union, the Treaty of Amsterdam provides that the maximum number of members should not exceed 700.
Universal service is a concept developed by the Community institutions. It refers to the set of general interest demands to which services such as telecommunications and the mail should be subject throughout the Community. The aim is to ensure that all users have access to quality services at an affordable price.