scholarly journals Europeanization by European Parliament Political Groups: The Case of Latvia 2004-2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-108
Author(s):  
Māris Andžāns ◽  
Kārlis Bukovskis ◽  
Andris Sprūds

Abstract This article assesses the top-down Europeanization of national political parties by the political groups of the European Parliament. Based on the premise that the national political parties alter their agendas and argumentation because of ties to their respective European Parliament political groups, the paper presents a case study of Latvia in the period from 2004 to 2019. The analysis focuses on the agendas of three political parties whose continuity can be clearly traced during the fifteen years – the “New Unity”, the “National Alliance” and the “Latvian Russian Union”. It concludes that the small number of members of the European Parliament elected from Latvia, migration of individual politicians from party to party, and low durability of Latvian parties themselves has limited the sustainability of Europeanization and impeded downloading of EU topics and principles to the national party level. Meanwhile, party programs of all three observed parties have Europeanized since 2004 in terms of the number and depth of the EU issues addressed.

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Spirova ◽  
Boyka Stefanova

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to their political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the elections for members of the European Parliament. This article presents a comparative study of the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the participation of ethnic political parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 and 2009 electoral cycles of the European Parliament.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Edoardo Bressanelli ◽  
Nicola Chelotti ◽  
Wilhelm Lehmann

Brexit makes both a direct and an indirect impact on the European Parliament (EP). The most direct consequence is the withdrawal of the 73-member strong UK contingent and the changing size of the political groups. Yet, the impact of Brexit is also felt in more oblique ways. Focussing on the role and influence of the EP in the EU–UK negotiations, and of the British delegation in the EP, this article shows that the process, and not just the outcome of Brexit, has significant organisational implications for the EP and its political groups. Moreover, it also showcases the importance of informal rules and norms of behaviour, which were affected by Brexit well ahead of any formal change to the UK status as a Member State. The EP and its leadership ensured the active involvement of the EP in the negotiating process—albeit in different ways for the withdrawal agreement and the future relationship—and sought to minimise the costs of Brexit, reducing the clout of British members particularly in the allocation of legislative reports.


Author(s):  
Ángel Rodríguez

El equilibrio en la regulación de los partidos políticos en las democracias contemporáneas se alcanza cuando la atribución a estos de funciones políticas relevantes se compensa con mecanismos de control. La aplicación de este principio a la regulación de los partidos políticos en el derecho de la UE pone de manifiesto una situación de equilibrio sui generis: las funciones de los partidos políticos europeos en las elecciones europeas o en el proceso legislativo del Parlamento Europeo está fuertemente limitada por el protagonismo de los Estados miembros y la política de partidos nacionales; por otro lado, los mecanismos de control establecidos sobre los partidos políticos europeos, incluidos los de democracia militante, deben coexistir con las normas nacionales al respecto, generando los problemas típicos de los escenarios multinivel.Balance in political parties regulation is met in contemporary democracies when the attribution of relevant political functions to political parties is counterweighed with mechanisms of control. The application of this principle to the regulation of political parties under the EU legal order reveals a sui generis balance: the functions of European political parties in European elections or in the legislative process within the European Parliament is significantly limited by the leading role played by member States and national party politics; besides, the mechanisms of control on European political parties, including those of militant democracy, must coexist with national laws governing the same subject, creating the typical problems of multilevel scenarios.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 617-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Morijn

Abstract This article presents and analyzes the EU values compliance mechanism as set up in Regulation 1141/2014, and amended by Regulation 2018/673, on the statute and funding of European political parties and European political foundations. It assesses to what extent this Regulation, that has been perceived and presented as targeting “populists,” provides a comprehensive response to illiberal politics at EU level, and what lessons can be drawn from its origin for the application of other values compliance based instruments such as Article 7 TEU. For that purpose it tracks the Regulation’s drafting history in considerable detail and critically assesses the outcome. It concludes that the Regulation offers a limited and limiting framework to act against illiberal political forces within the European Parliament, because it is unlikely to work in disciplining mainstream political groups and parties that harbor illiberal elements associated with Article 2 TEU-related problems in various member states. At the same time, the article identifies elements of the mechanism that provide opportunities to help shape a more effective EU response to rule of law backsliding across Europe.


2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugène Loos

The language choice at institutions of the European Union has been investigated in numerous studies examining such aspects as the European language constellation, institutional multilingualism and its possible reforms, linguistic capital and symbolic domination, and European identity related to the EU enlargement. In addition to these, studies researching the (language) practices at a specific EU institution, like the European Parliament, or analyzing EU organizational discursive practices have also been carried out. These studies, however, offer no insight into the way actors in EU institutions deal with multilingualism in their work place while producing texts for these institutions. It is for this reason that I decided to conduct a case study at the European Parliament to examine how advisers belonging to various political groups, despite their different national culture and distinct mother tongues, together succeed in producing what they call “panacea texts”. Finally, a possible new language constellation for the EU is discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sertan Akbaba

Abstract The article explores Euroscepticism and the way it is utilized within the politics of Europe, analyzed upon evidence from a Eurosceptic Euro-party located in the European Parliament, namely the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR). The aim of this article is to clarify that the selected party> disproves the argument of EU- criticism being an unfavourable condition, and, more importantly, its contribution to the political contestation in the EU. For such an assessment, a survey of the party> manifesto, party working documents, as well as the discourses of the Member of the European Parliament (MEPs) will be analyzed, and the concept of Euroscepticism will be once again in the centre of this analysis. This argument is evaluated based on the transnational-level analysis of the aforementioned party, focusing primarily on three specific issues-the democratic deficit, the issue of sovereignty! and anti-immigration rhetoric.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haruo Nakagawa

Akin to the previous, 2014 event, with no data on voter ethnicity, no exit polls, and few post-election analyses, the 2018 Fiji election results remain something of a mystery despite the fact that there had been a significant swing in voting in favour of Opposition political parties. There have been several studies about the election results, but most of them have been done without much quantitative analyses. This study examines voting patterns of Fiji’s 2018 election by provinces, and rural-urban localities, as well as by candidates, and also compares the 2018 and 2014 elections by spending a substantial time classifying officially released data by polling stations and individual candidates. Some of the data are then further aggregated according to the political parties to which those candidates belonged. The current electoral system in Fiji is a version of a proportional system, but its use is rare and this study will provide an interesting case study of the Open List Proportional System. At the end of the analyses, this study considers possible reasons for the swing in favour of the Opposition.


Management ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-487
Author(s):  
Andrzej Czyżewski ◽  
Sebastian Stępień

Summary The objective of the paper is to present the results of negotiations on the EU budget for 2014-2020, with particular emphasis on the Common Agricultural Policy. Authors indicate the steps for establishing the budget, from the proposal of the European Commission presented in 2011, ending with the draft of UE budget agreed at the meeting of the European Council on February 2013 and the meeting of the AGRIFISH on March 2013 and then approved by the political agreement of the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council on June 2013. In this context, there will be an assessment of the new budget from the point of view of Polish economy and agriculture.


Author(s):  
I. Semenenko ◽  
G. Irishin

The economic crisis of 2008–2009 highlighted new problems in the development of the German social market economy model and brought to the forefront the factors of its resilience that have ensured Germany’s leadership positions in the EU. Changes in economic policy have affected in the first place the energy and the financial sectors. Shifts in the political landscape have led to the appearance of new political parties. These changes have affected the results of the 2013 elections, the liberal democrats failure to enter the Bundestag has made the winner – CDU – seek new coalition partners.


Author(s):  
Smita Ramnarain

Critiques of liberal, top-down approaches to peacebuilding have motivated a discussion of alternative, locally-led, and community-based approaches to achieving and maintaining sustainable peace. This article uses a case study of women's savings and credit cooperatives in post-violence Nepal to examine the ways in which grassroots-based, locally-led peace initiatives can counter top-down approaches. The article presents ethnographic evidence from fieldwork in Nepal on how cooperatives expand through their everyday activities the definition of peace to include not only the absence of violence (negative peace) but transformatory goals such as social justice (positive peace). By focusing on ongoing root causes of structural violence, cooperatives problematize the postconflict period where pre-war normalcy is presumed to have returned. They emphasize local agency and ownership over formal peace processes. The findings suggest ongoing struggles that cooperatives face due to their existence within larger, liberal paradigms of international postconflict aid and reconstruction assistance. Their uneasy relationship with liberal economic structures limit their scale and scope of effectiveness even as they provide local alternatives for peacebuilding.


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