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The European Parliament and the European Political Space

Organiser: Brendan Donnelly, Federal Trust

Date: 30 March 2006

Venue: London

The event will explore the role the European Parliament and European political parties are playing in the emergence of a European political space, and what potential there is for the European Parliament to promote this emergence. A particular focus will be on the influence of recent, past and future enlargements on this process. These questions will be considered as part of the broader issues of the internal organization and functioning of the Parliament and the significance of the Parliament's political groups and of European political parties.

Contact: Ulrike Rüb (ulrike.rub@fedtrust.co.uk)  www.fedtrust.co.uk

Conference Report

This workshop, also funded in part by the European Commission through the research programme EU-Consent (www.eu-consent.net), examined the role of the European Parliament in the broader EU political system, paying particular attention to the ways in which enlargement has affected the EP. With 60 delegates, 8 speakers and 4 chairs from across Europe, the conference was well-attended, varied and lively.

Session 1: 

Nick Clegg MP
Home Affairs Spokesman, Liberal Democrats, and former MEP (1999-2004)

Chair: Professor Jo Shaw (University of Edinburgh)

After a short introduction to the theme of the conference and to the general EU-Consent research programme by Brendan Donnelly (The Federal Trust) and Dr Andreas Maurer (SWP Berlin), Professor Shaw introduced the first speaker, Nick Clegg MP.

Nick Clegg began his speech by arguing that the EP was sitting on the dividing line in one of the greatest dilemmas of contemporary politics. This dilemma was the mismatch between the persistence and resilience of national political loyalties and the reality of supranational integration and supranational economic challenges such as migration, the environment and new and emerging security threats. There was thus a democratic deficit in a globalised world.

The question, he continued, was how to reconcile the web of loyalties of the electorate and national institutions and the fact that those elected by voters could not deliver on the expectations invested in them. In this respect, the EU had to be seen as a means of giving states back some of the power lost through the process of globalisation.

The EP was, in Clegg's view, the most bold and imaginative attempt at supranational democracy ever attempted and represented a radical vision. He added that it remained a remarkable attempt to bridge the gap between the electorate and supranational forces. However, Clegg said that it was necessary to ask whether the EP had succeeded in fulfilling its promise.

The answer, he argued, had to be partly positive but mainly negative. One could answer 'yes' as the EP had succeeded in operating as a sophisticated and highly professional legislative chamber. Starting from rudimentary beginnings, Clegg said, it had managed to insert itself into the EU's complex legislative process. On the whole, and despite the many negative stereotypes, any judgement on the EP's work had to be positive, both in terms of legislative professionalism and of political maturity. For lawmakers, the EP was perhaps second only to the US Congress in its reach and in the effect of its legislation.

However, Clegg said, the EP had not yet mustered enough political legitimacy to act as an authentic 'voice'. Turnout was low, especially when compared to national elections; there was a lack of familiarity among citizens with the workings of the EP; and there was a lack of popular affinity with MEPs. In essence, Clegg argued, the EP did things the electorate did not care about, was not aware of and did not understand. Although Clegg accepted that this applied to varying degrees to national parliaments too, there was a persistent perception and reality that MEPs were political afterthoughts.

From his own personal experience, Clegg said he knew that the extremely large and diverse EP constituencies were a hindrance to building a close relationship between MEPs and their voters. Now, as an MP, he said he felt much more accountable to his electors and that there exist real consequences to his actions. As an MEP, he felt free, to the extent that he could say what he liked.

The EP had not used the opportunity to show us how to create a meaningful parliamentary bridge between voters and supranational governance and had not become a useful model for the world. Indeed loyalties in Europe seemed in Clegg's view to be becoming more rather than less national.

Clegg said that it remained important to try to increase the accountability of the EP. However, he argued that suggestions such as pan-European parties and small changes in the powers of the EP missed the point. Such innovations would only be important in Brussels and not for voters: they may make sense institutionally but have no political resonance. Instead, Clegg said, the relationship between the EU and national parliaments had to change. National elites had to improve their perception of the EU because it was not possible to change the image of the EU from Brussels. EU institutions were dependent on the way they were refracted and interpreted by national media elites.

What kind of innovation, Clegg asked, would then be needed? First, there should be more frequent role changes and more 'traffic' between MPs and MEPs; second, national parliaments needed to be systematically involved in EU affairs; third, the Commission should produce an annual legislative programme that is more clearly political and that creates debate and ideological conflict; finally, Clegg said that the 'early warning system' contained in the Constitutional Treaty was a good first step towards including national parliaments in EU legislation.

Clegg finished by arguing that a referendum debate could have been a positive event in the UK as it would have forced Tony Blair to stop fence-sitting and work hard to defeat the Eurosceptic media.

Clegg's speech was followed by a lively question-and-answer session. The differences between the links connecting MEPs and MPs to their respective voters were raised first, with Clegg defending his view that MPs are more accountable to their electors than MEPs. The potential importance of Europe-wide political parties and the possibility of electing the Commission President were also discussed.

Session 2: The European Parliament and Political Conflict

Professor Simon Hix (LSE) - 'After Enlargement: Voting Behaviour in the Sixth European Parliament'

Pierpaolo Settembri (EIPA, Maastricht) - 'Is the European Parliament competitive or consensual - and why bother?'

Chair: Anne Mette Vestergaard (Danish Institute of International Affairs)

Professor Hix presented a paper analysing whether voting behaviour in the EP had changed after the 2004 EU enlargement. He used roll-call votes from the first eighteen months of the new Parliament to examine possible changes. He said that it could be argued that the increase in the number of MEPs and national parties in the Parliament would lead to significant modifications in patterns of voting behaviour. However, the examination of the roll-call votes showed stable levels of party cohesion and a continuing predominance of the left-right dimension in explaining voting behaviour. Thus, Hix said, enlargement had altered politics in the European Parliament surprisingly little. However, he argued that there had been a change in the coalition behaviour of the Liberal group, which had begun to vote more often with the EPP-ED than with the PES.

Pierpaolo Settembri's presentation re-examined the debate on whether the Parliament is competitive or consensual by looking at voting in committees. Using these votes, he argued, could overcome many of the shortcomings of research based on roll-call votes. His analysis found that, even under qualified majority voting and co-decision, committees still tended to adopt reports by overwhelming majorities. This, he said, supported the argument that consociational theory was still important in explaining European politics.

Session 3: The EP's relations with European and National Institutions

Dr Andreas Maurer/Daniela Kietz (SWP, Berlin) - 'The European Parliament in Treaty Reform: Predefining IGCs through Interinstitutional Agreements'

Brendan Donnelly (The Federal Trust) - 'The Role of National Parliaments in EU Policy-Making'

Chair: Francis Jacobs (European Parliament)

The paper presented by Dr Andreas Maurer and Daniela Kietz attempted to explain why the EP had gained in power over time. They tried to do so by looking at what occurred between IGCs, or what they called the 'valleys' between European summits. In particular, they looked at the role of interinstitutional agreements (IIAs) in inducing later treaty reform. Using the example of EP involvement in comitology procedures, they argued that the Parliament used IIAs to take competencies from the Council and the Commission. By establishing informal yet politically binding rules in between IGCs, the Parliament could create 'facts' that were later included in treaty reforms.

Brendan Donnelly considered the role national parliaments could and should play in the European legislative process. In Britain, he argued, there was a tradition of executive discretion, which translated into a failure of the House of Commons to take the government to account on foreign policy in general. This failure had been transferred to EU policy as well. The House of Lords, Donnelly said, was much better at scrutinising EU legislation in detail, while the European Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons tended to revisit stale debates. However, Donnelly added that in his view only the EP could hold the Council to account, so any effort to tie national parliaments into the legislative process had to be seen as misguided.

In the question-and-answer session, it was discussed whether the EP could be seen as a unitary actor and what role the EP had played within IGC summits. The future of the Constitutional Treaty was also debated, with Andreas Maurer giving a German view on the future of the document.

Session 4: The EU's New Member States: First Experiences in the EP

Dr Tim Bale/ Professor Paul Taggart (Sussex) - 'The newest of the new? Accession state MEPs: who they are and who they think they are'

Melchior Szczepanik (Loughborough) - 'The European Parliament after enlargement: any different? Examining the adaptation of Polish MEPs and their impact on the political life of the chamber'

Dr Richard Whitaker (Leicester) - 'New kids on the Brussels block: committee assignments in the European Parliament before and after enlargement'

Chair: Michael Shackleton (European Parliament)

Dr Tim Bale and Professor Paul Taggart presented results from interviews conducted for a project on new parliamentarians in the EP. Their aim was to find out how MEPs differed in their role orientations: how do they see themselves, and what do they think their role as an MEP is? Bale and Taggart concluded that there were four roles that MEPs attribute to themselves: policy advocate, constituency representative, European evangelist and institutionalist. Among the MEPs from new member states that were interviewed, most could best be classified as evangelists. Bale and Taggart's study also constructed a database on the background of MEPs, and their analysis of MEPs from new member states showed that they tended to be highly educated and politically experienced.

Melchior Szczepanik presented a paper that considered how MEPs from Central and Eastern European countries had adapted to the EP. In particular, he looked at how the new MEPs had affected the balance of power in the Parliament and to what extent they had learnt parliamentary strategies specific to the EP. He considered in particular the socialisation and strategies of MEPs from Poland. He concluded that the new MEPs had not substantially changed the fundamental balance of power in the European Parliament. Moreover, the cohesion of party groups did not seem to have been upset by the arrival of MEPs from new member states. A clear exception, however, was the Czech ODS, which had frequently defected from the EPP-ED, though usually together with the British Conservatives.

Dr Richard Whitaker looked at the process of committee assignment before and after enlargement. Using a variety of data sources, he measured the validity of three theories of committee assignment (informational, distributive and party-based). He also examined the extent to which the characteristics of committee members had changed since enlargement. He concluded that informational concerns seemed to be very important in influencing the make-up of committees, as he found that committee members tended to have relevant occupational experience. In addition, in line with the party-centred model, politically outlying members of parties in the EP tended to be less likely to be assigned positions in some committees. Finally, he highlighted in particular the results of his research for the Environment Committee, where experience seemed to have become an important factor in deciding committee assignments since enlargement.

After the final question-and-answer session, Brendan Donnelly thanked the sponsors – EU-Consent and UACES – for their generous support and all participants for their contributions to the debate. The workshop finished with further informal discussions at a wine reception.

Last modified: Thursday, 25 May 2006
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