PARLIAMENT : PERMANENT PRESENCE IN WASHINGTON HAS PUT EP ON RADAR.

Arriving in the midst of Washington's biggest snowstorm in a century, the opening of a European Parliament's Liaison Office (EPLO), in January 2010, unsurprisingly was a low-key affair. But the establishment of Parliament's first, and to date only, representation outside the EU was an important milestone. It was timely too, sandwiched between the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which gave MEPs the power to veto international treaties, and their decision to exert that power just two months later when they rejected the EU-US SWIFT agreement on sharing bank record data to track terrorists. Four years on, how is the EP viewed around Washington?

"It depends on who you talk to," says Andrew Fishbein, programme officer at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) of the US. There is "a good understanding" of how Parliament works in Congress, largely due to the...