Punching Below Its Weight: The Role of the European Parliament in Politicised Consultation Procedures

Maria Chiara Vinciguerra

doi:10.17645/pag.v9i3.4069

Abstract

With Lisbon, the European Parliament formally acquired an equal standing to that of the Council of the EU in the making of policies in the AFSJ (area of freedom, security and justice). However, the growing political salience of policy issues at stake and bottom-up politicisation in the AFSJ has had the unintended effect of undermining the European Parliament’s internal unity even under consultation procedures. To show how this played out in practice during Europe’s migration and refugee crisis, this article analyses the European Parliament’s role, preferences, and bargaining position in the making of two Refugee Relocation Decisions (Council Decisions 2015/1523 and 2015/1601) under consultation procedure. To do so, this article exploits Putnam’s two-level framework (level I and II politics throughout the policy-making process) to explore early agenda-setting attempts and groups’ positions on issues of refugee relocation and burden-sharing, as they were formally stated in their position papers and expressed at the LIBE Committee and at plenary. This article shows that the high domestic salience and politicization of the issues at stake left MEPs torn between competing principals at home and within their European Parliament political groups and had the effect of weakening overall unity on the issue of refugee relocation.

Highlights

It is undeniable that, over time, and after the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has seen its power and influence as co‐legislator grow remarkably in the AFSJ
More recent policy developments in the AFSJ—most notably, the use of consultation for formulating key pol‐ icy responses to the migration crisis and the political impasse reached under various co‐decision pro‐ cedures—have suggested that member states ‘remain privileged policy entrepreneurs in the AFSJ’ (Trauner & Ripoll Servent, 2016, p. 1429)
This framework is integrated with a set of primary and secondary sources, including: six semi‐structured elite interviews undertaken between October 2018 and January 2019; vote analysis; and documentary research, spanning from press briefings to European Council conclusions, from interviewees’ meeting calendars to EP group position papers on migration

Summary

Introduction

Over time, and after the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has seen its power and influence as co‐legislator grow remarkably in the AFSJ (area of freedom, security and justice; see Hampshire, 2016; Hix & Høiland, 2011; Trauner & Ripoll Servent, 2016). More recent policy developments in the AFSJ—most notably, the use of consultation for formulating key pol‐ icy responses to the migration crisis (i.e., the Refugee Relocation Decisions under Council Decisions 2015/1523 and 2015/1601 and the EU‐Turkey Statement) and the political impasse reached under various co‐decision pro‐ cedures (e.g., the so‐called Dublin Regulation Recast and the Asylum Procedure Regulation)—have suggested that member states ‘remain privileged policy entrepreneurs in the AFSJ’ Bottom‐up politicization, much alike the one that under‐ mined consensus in the Council (Barigazzi & de La Baume, 2015), pre‐empted the EP from being influential in the formulation of the two Refugee Relocation Decisions This finding is consistent with existing literature on defection and abstentions in the EP, according to which MEPs are more likely to defect or abstain from their EP group’s position ‘on specific questions that are of par‐ ticular importance to them, but not on a general basis

Theory and Methods

EP Groups’ Positions on Refugee Relocation and Resettlement

Level I Politics in the European Parliament

The Impact of Level II Politics in the EP

Findings

Conclusion