The European Parliament and the eurozone crisis: An exceptional actor?

Abstract

The eurozone crisis has reinvigorated the debate over the requirement for supranational integration within the single currency area. With the focus of political scientists often restricted to the study of intergovernmental processes of crisis management, this article considers the role of the European Parliament during the key legislative negotiations on European Union fiscal governance reform. A comparative frame analysis of the major European Union institutions’ crisis discourse is applied. Frames are linked to macroeconomic ideology as well as to different integration scenarios within Economic and Monetary Union. It is found that the European Parliament converged around limited framing devices supporting intergovernmental fiscal discipline. Key explanatory factors here were the ideological divisions among Members of the European Parliament as well as the leadership role played by the European Council. These findings are broadly consistent with the new intergovernmentalist claims that the supranational institutions are no longer hard-wired to the pursuit of supranational integration.