EU Issues Research Articles

The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states

AbstractDebates about the European Union's democratic legitimacy put national parliaments into the spotlight. Do they enhance democratic accountability by offering visible debates and electoral choice about multilevel governance? To support such accountability, saliency of EU affairs in the plenary ought to be responsive to developments in EU governance, has to be linked to decision‐making moments and should feature a balance between government and opposition. The recent literature discusses various partisan incentives that support or undermine these criteria, but analyses integrating these arguments are rare. This article provides a novel comparative perspective by studying the patterns of public EU emphasis in more than 2.5 million plenary speeches from the German Bundestag, the British House of Commons, the Dutch Tweede Kamer and the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados over a prolonged period from 1991 to 2015. It documents that parliamentary actors are by and large responsive to EU authority and its exercise where especially intergovernmental moments of decision making spark plenary EU salience. But the salience of EU issues is mainly driven by government parties, decreases in election time and is negatively related to public Euroscepticism. The article concludes that national parliaments have only partially succeeded in enhancing EU accountability and suffer from an opposition deficit in particular.

Between Core and Peripheral Politics: Opposing the EU in the Western Balkans

This article seeks to determine whether parties’ governmental/opposition and core/peripheral positions in the Serbian and Croatian party systems are related to their responses to European integration. In general, parties’ positions in the party system were not crucial driving forces behind their stances towards the EU. However, the experience of opposition significantly contributed to ideological transformation and the adoption of a Euro-enthusiastic agenda by strategically motivated, formerly Eurosceptic parties. Also, different types of party systems in Serbia and Croatia created different opportunities for parties to express Eurosceptic sentiments, with a fragmented and polarised system in Serbia being more conducive to the sharp contestation of EU issues.

The interplay between parties and media in putting EU issues on the agenda: A temporal pattern analysis of the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom

We investigate the interplay between party communication and media coverage in putting EU issues on the agenda during the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. A temporal pattern analysis focuses on the dynamic perspective of media–parties’ interactions based on a quantitative content analysis of (a) the press releases published by parties and (b) the coverage of two leading newspapers per country 12 weeks prior to the elections. We find that most public discourses are started by the media; however, political parties especially in Austria are also quite successful in initiating discussions about EU issues. Interestingly, once an issue has been placed on the agenda, only a few parties take the opportunity of exploiting their issue-ownership in response to the media agenda. On the other side, media react to publications of all party types, even radical parties.

How Campaigns Enhance European Issues Voting During European Parliament Elections

Based on findings from the literature on campaign effects on the one hand, and the literature on European Parliament elections on the other, we propose a model of European Parliamentary elections in which the campaign shift the calculus of electoral support, making differences in national political allegiances less important and attitudes about the European project more important by informing voters of and getting them interested in European politics. In effect, we argue that the political campaign leading up to the election makes European Parliament elections less second order. While previous studies have demonstrated that EU issues can matter for voting behavior in European Parliament elections, existing research has drawn on post-election surveys that do not enable us to capture campaign effects. Our contribution is to assess the impact of a campaign by utilizing a rolling cross-sectional survey that enables us to track how voters were affected by the campaign. Our findings show that campaigns do have an effect on European Parliament election outcomes, in that they provide information that enables voters to make decisions based on their attitude on European issues, making voter decision-making more dominated by EU issue voting.

Japan in the Asia-Europe parliamentary dialogue: domestic actors on the international stage

This article explores the Asia–Europe Parliamentary Partnership (ASEP), which is the parliamentary dimension of the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM), from the perspective of the National Diet of Japan. ASEP brings together Japan’s key neighbours and trade partners, including the European Union, its so-called natural partner with whom it shares common values. This article argues that the Japanese Diet members perform a three-level norm promotion process at ASEP. First, they promote the norms and agenda of the Japanese government and thus their activity mirrors Japan’s policies on EU, ASEM and global issues. Even the same challenges, for example the untapped partnership with Europe, are visible. Second, they drive their own personal or party agendas, demonstrating that parliamentarians are not merely mouthpieces of the government but bring plurality and even dissonance to Japan’s message. Third, they promote parliamentary empowerment and participation in international affairs, norms that facilitate the Diet Members’ ability to oversee the Asia–Europe agenda as well as empower other participating parliaments. By taking the perspective of one country, this article provides insights to the little known workings of the Asia–Europe Parliamentary Partnership.

Priming Europe: Media effects on loyalty, voice and exit in European Parliament elections

Parties in government face a decline in EP elections after experiencing a surge in votes to win the national election. This occurs because voters are more inclined to give voice to their dissatisfaction with current government performance by voting for the opposition or exiting because less is at stake in second‐order elections. These elections negatively affect the electoral fortunes of governing parties as voters opt to punish poorly performing national governments in EP elections. Meanwhile, greater reliance on the EU issue dimension in vote choice models is taken as evidence for the increasing Europeanisation of EP elections. We examine the role of the media in making the EU issue dimension salient in such a way that government parties may benefit electorally from this increased saliency. To examine whether visibility of government party actors in media coverage increases loyalty for the governing parties either directly or via priming the EU issues for voters, we combine survey data from the 2009 European Election Studies with data on news coverage of those elections that links the governing party to the EU issue. We show that where the government is visible in EU news coverage, EU issue voting tends to increase loyalty while decreasing the probability to vote for the opposition and thus improves the electoral prospects for governing parties. This is even more the case if the issue is primed by negative campaign coverage.

Beyond Kriesiland: EU integration as a super issue after the Eurocrisis

AbstractWhere some researchers have seen only a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics, others have added a separate European Union dimension to the pre‐existing economic left‐right dimension to model the national political space. This article examines the effects of the European crisis on the national political space across the EU utilising data from the 2014 European Election Survey. It analyses the effect of a country's economic development on the coherence between attitudes towards the EU and economic issues using multilevel regression. Strong evidence is found that in the Southern European debtor states economic and European issues are merging as a result of strong European interference in their economic policy. In the Northern European creditor states a second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. These results offer the next step in theorising Europeanisation.

Legal Issues in EU’s Single Regulatory Scheme for Financial Sector and Its Relationship with the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)

Legal Issues in EU’s Single Regulatory Scheme for Financial Sector and Its Relationship with the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)

A matter of conflict: How events and parties shape the news coverage of EU affairs

This article argues that external factors of EU coverage in the media need to be reassessed against domestic factors, in particular how parties modulate media attention to EU affairs. We explain which parties may set the EU on the media agenda, and how parties interact with events depending on the level of conflict over EU issues. Drawing on the first long-term analysis of partisan agenda-setting of EU affairs in the media – based on ARIMA time-series models of monthly data collected for six newspapers from 1990 to 2015 – we determine the scale of partisan agenda-setting and find partial support for our model. Political parties do not face the intrusion of EU issues, but some of them are actively involved in this process.

What type of Europe? The salience of polity and policy issues in European Parliament elections

How much and why do political parties emphasize Europe in election campaigns? The literature is increasingly focusing on two aspects of party issue competition: position and salience. However, recent studies on salience tend to ignore the fact that Europe is a compound political issue. This article contributes to the debate by highlighting the crucial difference between constitutive and policy-related European issues. Using data from the Euromanifestos Project for 14 EU member states for the period 1979–2009, we first show that Europe is much more salient in European Parliament elections than previously assumed. Second, EU issue salience depends on party position and party system polarization over European integration. However, different explanations come into play once we bring in the polity-vs.-policy distinction. This has important implications for our understanding of party competition on European integration.

Party Positions about European Integration in Germany: An Electoral Quandary?

Given the rise of EU-scepticism in Germany and elsewhere, spatial models suggest that the SPD and the CDU/CSU have incentives to move towards a more critical position about integration. However, mainstream parties have developed a pro-integration reputation over several decades so it is difficult for them to adopt a stance reflecting outright opposition to Europe's integration. A comparison of party positions in 2008 and 2013 shows that the SPD hardly changed its policy stances on EU issues, whereas the CDU/CSU moved noticeably to a more EU-critical stance. However, situating German parties within the West European universe of party families shows that both remain quite positive about integration. The upshot of this is to illustrate the ‘blind corner’ of party representation on integration issues in the German party system which created electoral opportunities for the Euro-sceptic AfD.

Europe's young people tackle key EU issues

Young people from across Europe came together last month to debate what the EU can do to improve opportunities and deal with social problems

The Future of EU Trade Defence Investigations against Imports from China

China’s ‘Non-Market Economy’ (NME) status, under which the EU may, prima facie, reject the appropriateness of domestic Chinese prices in the calculation of anti-dumping duties, has sustained consistent criticism and constitutes one of the most contentious issues in EU–Chinese bilateral relations. Despite claims to the contrary, the EU may no longer have recourse to the NME methodology after 11 December 2016, by virtue of the expiration of a key provision in China’s Accession Protocol to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since some of the underlying concerns that triggered the creation of this provision may persist following December 2016, the EU may resort to other alternative methods. Firstly, the European Commission has often used the cost construction method under the Anti-Dumping Agreement to counteract NME like situations. However, the recent ruling of the panel in EU—Biodiesel has found this method to be largely incompatible with WTO law. Secondly, China’s Accession Protocol provides for special benchmarking and state owned enterprises provisions in the context of subsidy investigations that may serve as a means to counteract government subsidization. Thirdly, safeguards could also provide for an alternative method to counteract sharp unforeseen increases of imports causing or threatening to cause serious injury to Union producers. These alternative methods will likely replace the current NME methodology as a major source of contention between the EU and China.

글로벌 금융위기 이후 EU의 주요 거시경제이슈:실물경제와 금융시장의 통합을 중심으로

글로벌 금융위기 이후 EU의 주요 거시경제이슈:실물경제와 금융시장의 통합을 중심으로

¿A quién le importa Europa? La UE en las elecciones generales españolas de 2011

Este artículo versa sobre el papel de la Unión Europea (UE) en las elecciones generales en España. Emplea los siguientes materiales: la base de datos del Manifesto Project, los programas de los partidos que obtuvieron representación en los comicios de 2011, así como, también para 2011, la transcripción del único debate televisado y las cuentas en la red social twitter de los candidatos a la Presidencia del Gobierno del Partido Popular y del Partido Socialista. La metodología empleada es el análisis de contenido. Los datos confirman las expectativas derivadas de la teoría de la importancia (saliency theory). Los partidos españoles han desenfatizado los asuntos de la UE, incluso en 2011, cuando medidas impulsadas por el gobierno anterior, incluida una reforma constitucional, fruto de decisiones adoptadas a escala europea, motivaron la convocatoria anticipada de elecciones. La evolución del énfasis y posición sobre la UE de los partidos españoles contrasta con los cambios observados en estas variables en otros Estados miembros como Francia o Italia. Los hallazgos de esta investigación tienen implicaciones desde el punto de vista de la legitimidad democrática de la UE en España.

This time it's different … but not really! The 2014 European Parliament elections in Ireland

ABSTRACTThis report provides a review of the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections in Ireland. Conventional wisdom suggests attitudes to the incumbent government or to the candidates on offer have shaped EP elections in Ireland, with sentiments about the EU having little potency. 2014 had the potential to be different: the EU had been especially prominent in Ireland over the past four years since the 2010 EU–IMF (International Monetary Fund) bailout. The introduction of spitzenkandidaten (The President of the Commission had previously been chosen by a consensus of European leaders in the European Council, followed by approval from the EP. But under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Council must take into account the results of the EP elections when selecting the Commission President which gave the EP the power to influence the next Commission President, also gave credence to the idea that the 2014 elections might involve a stronger European dimension. Using data from media sources, an exit poll, and the 2014 European Election Study, our objective is to establish how the campaign evolved and what influenced the 2014 result in Ireland. We find the 2014 European elections for the most part were ‘second-order’, with vote choice mainly influenced by attitudes to the Fine-Gael/Labour coalition. Candidate personality also mattered. However, EU issues gained little traction in the campaign and opinions on the EU had minimal impact on party choice. Our results show that domestic politics remain key to understanding EP elections in Ireland.

The Impact of the Explosion of EU News on Voter Choice in the 2014 EU Elections

The European elections in 2014 were the first to be held after a long period in which EU-related news was prominent in the media. They were held after years of daily news about the euro crisis and after months of news about the popular uprising in the Ukraine against president Yanukovych, who had refused to sign the association agreement with the EU. This could have invited political parties to overcome the usual problem of low salience of EU issues by strongly profiling themselves on EU issues. Turnout at the 2014 EU elections, however, remained low, hinting that parties were unable to convert the attention for European issues into enthusiasm for their party at the European elections. This paper asks how vote choice was influenced by party campaigning on EU related issues. A news effects analysis based on a content analysis of Dutch newspapers and television, and on a panel survey among Dutch voters revealed that EU issues functioned as wedge issues: the more strongly parties were associated in the news with the euro crisis and the Ukraine, the less they succeeded in mobilizing voters.

Looking for the European Voter: Split-Ticket Voting in the Belgian Regional and European Elections of 2009 and 2014

While European elections are often seen as remote from EU issues, considerations specifically linked to the EU came to the forefront in the wake of the 2014 European elections: the economic and financial crisis, the new process of designation of the European Commission President, and the alleged increase of Eurosceptic votes. This increased salience of political debates about the EU asks for a reconsideration of the ‘second-order nature’ of European elections. In this context, as in 2009, the Belgian electorate voted for the regional and European levels on the very same day. Belgian voters were thus offered the opportunity to split their ticket between both levels. This allows comparing the occurrence and determinants of these ‘immediate switching’ behaviours in 2014 with those of the presumably less politicized EP elections in 2009. We do that by employing the 2009 and 2014 PartiRep Election Study data. On the one hand, the article shows that split-ticket voting cannot be explained by economic voting, European identity, and attitudes towards integration in 2014. On the other hand, the unique configuration of the Belgian elections enables us to observe that the introduction of Spitzenkandidaten did enhance split-ticket voting for voters who could directly vote for this candidate (in Flanders), while this did not increase split-ticket voting among voters who could only indirectly support the candidate (in Wallonia).

Has Eurosceptic Mobilization Become More Contagious? Comparing the 2009 and 2014 EP Election Campaigns in The Netherlands and France

With the lingering Euro crisis, personalized competition for the Commission presidency, and a surge of Eurosceptic parties, the 2014 European Parliament elections took place against an unknown level of European Union politicization. How does this changing context affect the supply side of party competition on European issues in EP election campaigns? This article compares the 2014 and 2009 EP elections in two EU founding members with high electoral support for radical left and radical right Euroscepticism—France and the Netherlands. We study publically visible patterns of partisan mobilization in the written news media with semi-automated content analyses. The data indicate that visible party mobilization on EU issues was on average not significantly higher in 2014. While particularly mainstream and especially incumbent parties publically mobilize on European issues during both campaigns, the radical right’s mobilization efforts have become more visible during the 2014 elections. Examining the temporal dynamics within electoral campaigns, we show that the Eurosceptic fringes exhibit significant contagion effects on the mainstream parties, but that the extent of this contagion was surprisingly lower in the 2014 campaign. As a result, the increasing EU politicization between the 2009 and 2014 electoral contests has not resulted in an enhanced and more interactive supply of partisan debate about Europe.

Una nuova frattura in Europa?

In the enduring debate regarding the structure of political competition, substantial evidence has been accumulated on the emergence of a new European dimension and on its relevance in some national elections. Yet, there have been few attempts to match the supply side with the demand side of electoral politics through cross-national studies. To fill the gap, this article adopts a two-step procedure. On the one hand, it investigates the political potential of Euroscepticism tracing back the fault lines of a new cleavage to processes of economic competition, cultural diversity and political integration. On the other, it showcases the uneven process of politicization of the EU issues in Italy, France, and United Kingdom. In these countries the growing difficulties of mainstream parties to deal with issues that crosscut the traditional left-right dimension have paved the way to the success of new anti-establishment parties. These challengers have exploited conflicts and issues generated by the integration process thus undermining the conventional dynamics of party competition. Nonetheless, preferences on the integration process affect voting behaviour only in Great Britain and, partially, in France, while in the Italian case there is still little evidence of EU issue voting.