Behind the scenes at the EU

http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-23767886

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With the 2014 European Parliament elections approaching, Politics Europe's Adam Fleming walks the EU corridors of power to find out more about the various cogs in the EU machinery.

The European Commission - based in Brussels - is the EU's "executive", with the power to initiate legislation and to oversee its implementation.

It is also responsible for being the "guardian of the treaties", ensuring that the union's development is in line with existing EU legislation.

The commission is made up of 28 members - one from each EU member state - headed by a president.

Each commissioner is responsible for a particular policy areas, such as agriculture, energy or regional affairs.

The Council of Ministers is - along with the European Parliament - one of two legislative bodies of the European Union.

It is made up of national ministers, and there are various different configurations of the Council, such as the Environment Council, the Fisheries Council and the Foreign Affairs Council.

Each Council is chaired by the relevant minister from the country holding the presidency of the EU.

An exception is the Foreign Affairs Council, which is chaired by the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

The European Parliament is the other legislative body of the European Union, with MEPs directly elected by EU citizens.

Its powers have expanded over the past three decades, since it was first directly elected in 1979.

It is based across three sites, with plenary meetings taking place in Strasbourg, much of its administration in Luxembourg, and the bulk of its workload being based in Brussels.

With 24 official languages, the European Parliament's interpretation and translation service is at the heart of everything it does.

There are more than 500 different language combinations on offer, meaning that between 800 and 1000 interpreters are on hand for key sittings of the parliament.

The parliament also employs almost 700 translators to translate the many hundreds of documents that are produced every year. There are also translators and interpreters employed by the other EU institutions.

As the EU has expanded it has becoming increasingly difficult to find certain translators for the lesser-spoken languages, such as people able to translate a Latvian document into Maltese.

This has led to the development of a "relay" system where a document is translated via a more widely-spoken language such as English or French, before being translated into another language.

The work and functioning of the European Union is set out through a series of treaties - stretching back to the 1957 Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Community.

Each new treaty has to be agreed by every national leader, through a process known as an Inter-Governmental Convention, before being ratified by each country, sometimes via a process of a national referendum.

The current key treaty is the 2007 Lisbon Treaty which consolidated and reorganised the existing treaties into two main documents - the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

The European Court of Justice - not to be confused with the European Court of Human Rights - is based in Luxembourg and has the power to enforce the EU's legislation.

It is made up of one judge per member state, although it normally hears cases in panels of three, five or 13.

The Court has the power to fine organisations, including national governments, for breaching or failing to properly implement EU law.

It also provides a means of interpreting and validating treaties or other pieces of EU legislation.

In addition to Brussels and Strasbourg, many of the EU's institutions also have a base in Luxembourg.

Not only does the city hold much of the administration and translation services of the European Parliament, Luxembourg is also the base of institutions including the European Investment Bank, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Auditors.

It is also the meeting place for a defined number of Council summits each year.