The chapter focuses on the European Union and the power struggles between its different institutional bodies. European integration started in the economic realm. Political representants were intentionally downplayed to not infringe upon populations’ allegiances to the nation state. Balance sheets, price lists, postmodern architecture, and an assembly-line production of texts generate the image of a space of flows needing to be governed with liberal governance procedures. However, since the direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, the Members of the European Parliament have embarked on a strategy to stage plenary votes as performative acts, without having had the relevant legal competencies or member states’ approval. Over time, the European Parliament enhanced its power, and the EU now looks a little like a federal state. More recently, another form of political contestation against economic integration has emerged from the heads of governments and states with the mediatization of the European Council. The dramatization of the heads of states’ summits provides a formidable spectacle that stages the EU as an intergovernmental organization. The chapter traces struggles over representants and their backlashes in the EU up to the present. How this order will develop depends on how the general public will receive those representants.

Chapter 2 presents the current institutional framework, with a special focus on the exercise of the legislative function. After a brief presentation of the most relevant institutional principles, notably those of effectiveness, institutional balance, and sincere cooperation, the chapter turns to the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission and explains their prerogatives and internal structures in the light of the concept of “executive federalism.” The chapter shows that the legislative institutions of the EU, in line with the principles of autonomy and internal differentiation, allocate important preparatory tasks to different internal bodies (that is, parliamentary committees, Coreper, and GRI) and analyzes the role of those bodies in the adoption of legislation.