scholarly journals The European Parliament

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
State Governments ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Third Stream ◽  
Competition And Cooperation ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
The Eu

The European Parliament (EP) has experienced an unprecedented transformation since its first direct elections in 1979 and developed into one of the most powerful legislatures in the world. It started as a talking shop assembly of legislators seconded from the national parliaments of the European Communities’ member states who met twice a year. Now it co-decides on nearly all European Union (EU) legislation, approves the EU budget together with member state governments represented by the EU Council, scrutinizes the EU executive (i.e., the European Commission), and needs to give its consent for any new international trade agreement of the EU. This spectacular evolution has stimulated prolific research on the EP’s elections, internal organization, relations with other EU institutions, and policy impact. This bibliographical review does not purport to include all the important contributions but rather offers a map of this rich scholarly work. This article summarizes EP research into four streams. First, scholars have investigated the ability of the EP election to effectively link the EU to its citizens and increase its legitimacy and accountability. Second, an extensive body of work analyzes party competition and cooperation in the EP. A related third stream of literature studies the parliamentary organization and committees. Fourth, scholars have developed elaborate theoretical models and empirical tools to investigate the power relations between the EP and other EU institutions. These debates are discussed after a brief review of major data sources used in EP studies as well as key textbooks and journal venues for research on the EP.

Party Politics Triumph over Substantive Scrutiny and Principled Policy: Examining Czech MPs’ Voting Behaviour in Regard to EU Affairs

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125
Author(s):  
Martin Kuta
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
The Eu

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances – which are expressed through voting – towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties’ behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system.

scholarly journals The Increasing Power of the European Parliament: Negotiating the eu-India Free Trade Agreement

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Frennhoff Larsén
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Trade Negotiations ◽  
International Level ◽  
Game Analysis ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Eu

AbstractSince the Lisbon Treaty increased the legal role of the European Parliament (ep) ineutrade policy, there has been a debate about the extent to which these legal competencies have translated into actual influence over the content and outcome ofeutrade negotiations. Using the trade negotiations between theeuand India as a case study, this article argues that the impact of theephas indeed been significant. Through two-level game analysis, which extends its domestic focus to include theepas a domestic constituent, it demonstrates how theephas affected theeuwin-set in ways that have both hindered and facilitated agreement at the international level between theeuand India. It also shows how theephas affected the negotiating dynamics and how theeunegotiators have had their preferences somewhat compromised by theepin their attempt at reaching an agreement with India.

scholarly journals The political system of European Union after European Parliament Election of 2019

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Andrii Martynov
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Political System ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Eu

The politics of the European Union are different from other organizations and states due to the unique nature of the EU. The common institutions mix the intergovernmental and supranational aspects of the EU. The EU treaties declare the EU to be based on representative democracy and direct elections take place to the European Parliament. The Parliament, together with the European Council, works for the legislative arm of the EU. The Council is composed of national governments thus representing the intergovernmental nature of the European Union. The central theme of this research is the influence of the European Union Political system the Results of May 2019 European Parliament Election. The EU supranational legislature plays an important role as a producer of legal norms in the process of European integration and parliamentary scrutiny of the activities of the EU executive. The European Parliament, as a representative institution of the European Union, helps to overcome the stereotypical notions of a “Brussels bureaucracy” that limits the sovereignty of EU member states. The European Parliament is a political field of interaction between European optimists and European skeptics. The new composition of the European Parliament presents political forces focused on a different vision of the strategy and tactics of the European integration process. European federalists in the “European People’s Party” and “European Socialists and Democrats” consider the strategic prospect of creating a confederate “United States of Europe”. The Brexit withdrawal from the EU could help the federalists win over European skeptics. Critics of the supranational project of European integration do not have a majority in the new composition of the European Parliament. But they are widely represented in many national parliaments of EU Member States. The conflicting interaction between European liberals and far-right populists is the political backdrop for much debate in the European Parliament. The result of this process is the medium term development vector of the European Union.

9. Legitimate and Democratic? The European Union’s International Role

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Lord
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
European Council ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
International Policy ◽  
Member States ◽  
International Policies ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
International Role ◽  
The Eu

This chapter examines the legitimacy and democratic control of the European Union's international policies. It first explains why, with whom, and by what standards the EU's international role need to be legitimate before discussing the issue of democratic control involving the European Parliament (EP) and national parliaments. More specifically, it considers the member states' mantra that the legitimacy of EU decisions is ‘founded on the principle of representative democracy’, delivered through the representation of citizens in the EP and national democracies in the European Council, the Councils, and their own national parliaments. It also emphasizes the great variety in the EU's international policy procedures and concludes by assessing how legitimacy might enable or constrain the development of the EU as an international actor.

scholarly journals Who Teams Up with the European Parliament? Examining Multilevel Party Cooperation in the European Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Katharina L. Meissner ◽  
Guri Rosén
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Eu Policy ◽  
Trade Politics ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Eu

Abstract As in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade.

The Cause of the European Democracy Deficit is Sought in the Wrong Place

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter Grimm
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Member States ◽  
European Court ◽  
European Democracy ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Wrong Place ◽  
The Eu

This chapter considers the proposal that increasing the clout of the European Parliament will solve the EU’s legitimacy problem. It first examines the argument that giving the Parliament the powers national parliaments typically enjoy will enable the EU to gain democratic legitimacy. It then discusses the importance of making a full account of standards, such as representation, in ascertaining whether increasing the powers of the European Parliament will deliver on its promise. It also examines the asymmetry between negative and positive integration as the root of the liberalizing tendency of the European Court of Justice’s jurisprudence. The chapter contends that the EU must develop a self-interest in strong democracy in the Member States, rather than undermining it by increasingly crippling national powers, and calls for an end to the detachment of the European Commission and the ECJ from the democratic processes in the EU and the Member States.

scholarly journals Trust spillovers among national and European institutions

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goran Dominioni ◽  
Alberto Quintavalla ◽  
Alessandro Romano
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
European Institutions ◽  
Trust In Institutions ◽  
High Level ◽  
Institutional Relationships ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Eu

In this article, we study spillovers in political trust between the national parliaments of 15 Member States and the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank in the period 2000–2015. We show that in most instances spillovers between the national parliaments and the European Commission and the European Parliament are bidirectional, asymmetric, and change over time and place. A corollary of these findings is that simultaneously achieving high level of trust in institutions at different levels of governance may require a deeper understanding of the complex inter-institutional relationships that exist in the EU multilevel governance setting.

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