Images and roles of the European Union in the climate change debate

Being a politician has become a profession for many. With the development of the European Parliament (EP) into an influential institution at the European level, building a career in the EP has become an interesting option for politicians. This thesis studies the different career paths of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and explores how these career paths and MEPs’ ambitions have an impact on their participation in the legislative process and thereby the way they represent citizens. This thesis is based on three empirical research papers. The first paper identifies two career paths that MEPs might follow, in addition to the three others which are generally used, and links these to the activities of MEPs in parliament. I find that an MEP’s career path and ambitions are relevant in explaining certain legislative behaviour across member states and party groups. The second paper looks at the career ambitions of MEPs and finds that MEPs’ career paths are also the result of expressed ambitions by politicians themselves, despite their dependence on party leadership and the second-order nature of EP elections. MEPs looking to pursue a career in the EP are more actively involved in the parliament’s activities. This higher level of participation and acquired policy influence is rewarded when MEPs stand for re-election. The third paper looks at the group of MEPs who become lobbyists after their time in parliament. Building on what is known from Washington, this paper finds that being on a powerful committee, from a smaller political group and having a longer tenure make it more likely that an MEP becomes a lobbyist. The findings across the three papers support the idea that the career paths and ambitions of politicians provide an important explanation when trying to understand an MEP’s willingness to invest resources in the EP’s legislative process.

Do members of the European Parliament (MEPs) experience the rally-around-the-flag effect? What explains the consensus and dissensus in the European Parliament (EP) when responding to geopolitical crises? Guided by these questions, we compare how MEPs debate the EU’s initial response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Considering that the EP is a multi-level and transnational context, we explore the patterns of consensus and dissensus on the EP level, on the EP party group level, and on the regional level of East versus West Europe. To this end, we use an original dataset of hand-coded speeches of MEPs in 12 EP debates. We identify three types of reasoning behind the MEPs’ speech acts in terms of the optimal EU response: power-driven, value-driven, and non-response. Each sentence from MEPs’ interventions is coded under one of the three categories. Consequently, we create a three-dimensional space where we can locate each individual MEP as well as aggregate MEP positions into a party group, regional, or the EP level. This allows to estimate geometric distances between MEPs’ positions and that of their party group, region, and the EP. Basing these estimations on speech acts makes a mixed-methods design possible. We first conduct regression analysis to explore what explains the variance in the distances and then compare patterns of consensus and dissensus across parties and regions qualitatively. We find evidence for the rally-around-the-flag effect, but also show that the effect is not uniform across party groups.

The European Parliament (EP) can act as a democratic check on the European Commission. By relaxing the assumption of the EP as a unitary actor, this article examines factors determining the behaviour of individual members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in parliamentary scrutiny. It tests propositions based on the costs and benefits of each voting outcome in the context of the four EP roll-call votes cast in the period from 1995 to 2002 on the EP’s decision to grant budgetary discharge to the Commission. The main findings are: (i) ideology matters in the MEPs’ attitude toward the Commission; (ii) national parties influence the MEPs’ behaviour significantly in the discharge votes; and (iii) the ties between the Commissioners and the MEPs through national partisanship influence the MEPs’ attitude to the Commission when it is under threat.

This article presents a new survey of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) conducted during 2015, which adds to a time series of MEP surveys carried out by the European Parliament Research Group. The data allow for comparison of MEPs’ views with those of the EU public, European Parliament candidates, and members of national and regional parliaments in Europe. The survey includes questions on topical issues, such as intra-EU migration and the UK–EU relationship. The dataset can be used to address a range of research questions concerning MEPs’ preferences and representation. This article presents details of the 2015 MEP survey and uses the data to assess what explains MEPs’ attitudes to the question of whether all EP plenary sessions should be held in Brussels.

This study examines how national democratic accountability regimes and populism influence transparency supplied and demanded in the European Parliament. The study builds on research on legislative transparency, democratic accountability and populism, and is based on an analysis of the activity of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during the 9th European Parliament term. It shows that MEPs from countries with strong accountability regimes supply and demand more transparency, and that MEPs from populist parties supply less transparency but demand more than those from mainstream parties. The study also shows that MEPs from mainstream and populist parties coming from countries with weak democratic accountability do not differ in their supply and demand for transparency. However, when they come from countries with strong accountability regimes, MEPs from mainstream parties supply more transparency, while MEPs from populist parties demand more transparency. The study makes contributions to research on EU transparency and populism in Europe, and has relevant implications in terms of EU democratic quality.

Investigates attitudes amongst decision makers in the European Parliament to the role of information in their work, and their ability to identify, access and evaluate that information most relevant to their needs. Aims to elicit data regarding levels of satisfaction amongst MEPs in relation to information retrieval, and to identify areas of information need which were not being addressed. Describes research methodology and analyses results. Results reveal the wide range of subjects that are of interest to MEPs; that all MEPs have research assistants to help in their work, with an average of 3.5 assistants per MEP; the majority of these assistants are based in the UK and are employed full‐time; and that the most popular sources were unofficial, informal contacts and MEPs’ own files, as opposed to the official EU databases and services. Finds that the main problems faced by MEPs in information retrieval are pressure of time and the overwhelming number and variety of information sources available. Makes recommendations for further research.

Empirical research reveals the party membership of European party group (EPG) is a strong predictor of the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Yet, we know little about whether this still holds true if the legislative proposals were strongly tied to constrain national budget autonomy and macroeconomic policies. The Lisbon Treaty has significantly enhanced the EP’s formal role in the fiscal and macroeconomic surveillance law-making process by allowing the EP to have co-decision powers under the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP). However, there is little research that provides an analysis of MEP voting behaviour in this policy area. This research focuses on the case of the Six-Pack because it is the first fiscal and macroeconomic surveillance legislative package ever to pass through the EP. This research attempts to answer the following questions: When making stronger rules for fiscal and macroeconomic surveillance, do MEPs vote along with political ideologies, national parties, national affiliations or European party groups? To understand the determinants of MEPs vote on the Six-Pack, this thesis looks at 11 amended proposal votes and 6 legislative resolution votes in the Seventh European Parliament. Using multinomial logit regression model, this paper identifies several determinants which affect how MEP vote. First, it finds that the EPG membership variables are highly significant determinants of which way MEPs vote on the Six-Pack. The MEPs from the centre-right EPGs are much more in favour of the Six-Pack, while the MEPs of the radical left or centre-left EPGs are more likely to vote against. Second, the statistic results indicate that MEPs from a member state with a high percentage of public trust in the European Commission are more likely to support for the provisions of stringent fiscal rules in the Six-Pack.

This article explores the use of the Internet by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), assessing the adoption of online communication as well as its strategic uses. In particular we analysed the websites, weblogs and social networking site profiles of all MEPs who linked to an online presence from the European parliament homepage, a total of 440 MEPs representing all 27 member nations. Through a thorough analysis of the content using a scheme designed to record the presence and functionality of 103 specific features and tools and recency of updates, we assess how MEPs use the Internet to connect with a range of audiences; from journalists to loyal supporters. We find MEPs embracing a range of features which would be appealing to a wide range of different visitors. There is a minor generational divide among MEPs based both on their age and the length of time their country has been a member of the European Union. However overall we suggest there is an ebb and flow of innovation within the online political communication of these parliamentarians.

ABSTRACTThe European Parliament (EP) was instrumental in acquiring new oversight powers in EU legislation addressing the European debt crisis, such as the economic dialogue. We know little about how Members of the EP (MEPs) use these powers in practice. In this paper, I systematically analyse the practical application of the economic dialogue by focusing on the factors that drive MEPs’ engagement and diligence in the dialogue. Using original data on MEPs’ activity and type of questions asked, I focus on the economic dialogue with EU governments between 2012 and 2016. I show that MEPs are most active when their own government is under scrutiny and MEPs hold key institutional roles. Parliamentary questions are, however, often patchy and unfocused. Only few MEPs ask questions that go to the heart of the economic situation facing the country under scrutiny.

The 2014–2019 European Parliament (EP) contained an unprecedented number of Eurosceptic Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). These changes reflected a growing politicisation of European integration in which conflicts between those opposing the process and those favouring it became more pronounced. Using a unique time series of surveys of the European parliamentarians, we examine how far the policy preferences of the MEPs responded to this politicisation. MEPs' preferences over general policy questions as well as European Union (EU)‐specific issues have traditionally been described by a multi‐dimensional space: with a left‐right dimension, incorporating both economic and socio‐cultural issues, distinct from a pro‐/anti‐Europe dimension. We find that the political space in the EP evolved in the 2014–2019 parliament, with MEPs' preferences more strongly aligned along a single dimension, which captures economic, socio‐cultural, and EU integration issues.

ABSTRACTGiven the considerable increase in its powers over recent decades, this article asks how far the European Parliament (EP) is an attractive place to build a legislative career. Using a theory of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) as policy-seekers, it shows that MEPs are indeed building careers in this supranational institution. Turnover is in decline in the EP and on its committees, average length of service has increased and greater proportions of MEPs aspire to stay than previously. Looking at the 30 years since direct elections began, policy influence and office benefits are associated with lower likelihood of exiting the EP while being on the geographical periphery of the EU makes MEPs more likely to leave.

This article investigates the impact of the Internet on representative democracy through a case study of the European Parliament (EP) by answering a number of inter-related questions. First, would Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) endorse the use of the Internet for parliamentary communication? Second, is the Internet a trustworthy medium for achieving parliamentary efficiency, transparency and accountability in the twenty-first century European Union (EU)? Third, has the EP responded effectively to the opportunities and challenges brought by the Internet? Informed by first-hand empirical research, this article concludes that, while the EP and MEPs were both enthusiastic about the democratic potential of the Internet, they were ill-prepared for the many issues raised by the use of the Internet such as the double implications of online transparency and security; funding of MEPs' personal website; the absence of institutional rules and the inactive use of hyperlinks by MEPs.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have a multitude of parliamentary duties and, accordingly, have to prioritize some parliamentary activities over others. So far, we know comparably little about this prioritization process. Based on principal–agent theory, we argue first, that MEPs’ parliamentary activities are systematically determined by the “visibility” and usefulness of parliamentary instruments for their key principal; second, we expect the exclusiveness of candidate selection procedures of an MEP’s national party—the nomination and the final list placement—to determine her/his key principal (i.e., elites or members of national parties). Combining multi-level mixed effects linear regression models and expert interviews, we show that MEPs who are nominated and whose final list placement is decided by an exclusive circle of national party elites prioritize speeches, whereas MEPs who are nominated or whose final list placement is decided by more inclusive procedures prioritize written questions and opinions or reports. In other words, speeches seem particularly useful to communicate with national party elites, while other activities are used to serve larger groups of party members. These findings open up the black-box of the “national party principal” and illustrate how a complex principal–agent relationship stimulates very specific parliamentary activity patterns in the EU’s multi-level system.

Which factors drive support of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for trade liberalisation? The literature suggests that economic factors, ideology, and politicization shape MEP voting behaviour. Drawing on a new dataset encompassing all trade-related MEP votes (2009-2019), this study offers a quantitative assessment of the determinants of MEP support for trade liberalisation. It finds that ideological factors have the strongest and most persistent effect on MEP support for trade liberalisation. The economic competitiveness of MEPs’ home regions, in turn, has only a limited effect. Politicization, lastly, has an unclear effect on its own and mostly influences MEP voting behaviour through interactions with ideological and economic factors. The study offers the first comprehensive assessment of the determinants of MEP voting on trade liberalisation and contributes to political economy research on electoral institutions and trade, the European Parliament’s role in trade policy and the effects of politicization on policy-making.

What French members of the European Parliament (MEPs) believe and what they do as a result of these beliefs can be understood in comparison with what we know about MEPs from other member-states on the one hand, and about French national members of Parliament (MPs) and citizens on the other hand. French MEPs do not diverge much from MEPs of other nationalities in the way they deal with religion at the policy level. Significant French specificities remain regarding religion as a cultural and memory reference. The heritage of ‘laïcité’ leads to an emphasis on the separation between religion and politics and may be reactivated as a symbolic material to reassert French national identity in confrontation with other political traditions. Religious issues do not make for consensus and are still used as markers of ideological and party boundaries, between right and left and within each side, as they are a relatively costless resource to build a distinctive political profile. Beyond these distinctions, a ‘French way’ of handling religion is commonly acknowledged and ‘laïcité’ works as an encompassing and resilient framework. The European Parliament (EP) may offer a structure of opportunities and constraints to reformulate slightly the national narrative about religion, but it does not alter the beliefs and practices of French MEPs, who appear largely similar to French MPs and citizens to the extent that they are largely secularised and consider religion as a secondary purpose submitted to political rules and individual choice.