Inside European Parliament Politics

Informality, Information and Intergroups

Laura Landorff

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030042066
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The study of the informal dimension of EU politics is more important than ever in order to understand how the EU system works. This book presents an innovative and original study on informal cross-party, cross-committee groupings in the European Parliament, so-called Intergroups. Building on extensive fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews and observations, this study shows how parliamentarians of the seventh European Parliament (2009-2014) gain a variety of social resources, such as social, informational and political capital, in Intergroups, which they subsequently mobilise to foster opinion-formation across political groups and parliamentary committees, and to shape the EP's agenda and policy outcomes. Drawing on an interdisciplinary, Bourdieusian-inspired framework, this book makes a valuable contribution to sociological approaches in European integration studies. Shedding new light on the informal dimension of parliamentary practices and politics, this book appeals to EPas well as EU scholars, to students and practitioners of EU politics, and civil society.

© The Author(s) 2019

Laura LandorffInside European Parliament PoliticsPalgrave Studies in European Political Sociologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04206-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Laura Landorff¹

(1)

Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Laura Landorff

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected institution of the European Union (EU). Thus, it is of utmost importance for the legitimacy of the Union. It is a transnational representative body that works as part of an institutional triangle consisting of the European Commission and the Council of the European Union , ¹ which distinguishes it from other legislative institutions (Judge & Earnshaw, 2008). In its current 8th parliamentary term (2014–2019), the EP has 751 members from 28 EU member states, representing over 500 million EU citizens (European Parliament, 2017). In this way, the EP is one of the largest parliaments in the world (Judge & Earnshaw, 2008). ² Established in 1952 as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)—as unelected, consultative body—the EP has come a long way ‘in a historically short period of time’ (Corbett, Jacobs, & Neville, 2016, p. 451; Hix, Raunio, & Scully, 2003). Since the 1970s, the Parliament’s budgetary, legislative and control competencies have been gradually enhanced with every treaty reform reaching its apex—for the time being—with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. ³ Post-Lisbon, the EP is co-legislator with the Council in 85 policy areas, for instance in the areas of economic governance, consumer protection, environment and energy (Burns, 2016; European Parliament, 2018). This means that the majority of EU laws is adopted jointly by these two institutions (Burns, 2016). Moreover, it acts as ‘genuine bicameral budgetary authority’ deciding on equal footing with the Council on the EU’s budget (Burns, 2016, p. 158). Finally, the EP further advanced its control functions, for instance, its influence on the selection of the European Commission president, and thus on the ‘most powerful executive office in the EU’ by initiating the Spitzenkandidaten process prior its elections in 2014 (Hobolt, 2014, p. 1528). Thus, today the EP is a key player within the EU institutional system, and one of the most influential parliaments in the world.

The EP is a young parliament that has been directly elected for the first time in 1979 and thereafter every five years. It is a dynamic parliament that increased its size from 410 seats in its very first term (1979–1984) to 751 in the 8th term (2014–2019). The EP stands out for its own, unique organisational complexities and multilingual and multinational features operating in three different locations (Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg) and in 24 official working languages (European Parliament, 2015a). In line with the EP’s special characteristics, its members represent a new type of politician who is different from nominated delegates working in international organisations or elected parliamentarians in national legislatures (Kauppi, 2003). As representatives, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) have ‘important responsibilities towards multiple ‘constituencies’’, i.e. towards their voters at home, their national political parties and their EP political groups (Scully & Farrell, 2003, p. 285). Consequently, MEPs are subject to various, at times competing demands from voters, from colleagues in the EP, from parties at national, regional and local level, from interest groups or ‘their own sense of duty and ambition’ (Katz, 1999, p. 61). This fluid nature, and the fact that its members are less hemmed in by domestic parties, voters and interests, allows the parliamentarians ‘considerable leeway in choosing – at least initially – how they want to play things while they are in Strasbourg and Brussels’ (Bale & Taggart, 2006, p. 11). As this book will show, the creation and maintenance of Intergroups by MEPs constitutes a brilliant example for this kind of leeway. The EP’s transformation from an unelected, marginalised body within the EU’s institutional triangle to a genuine co-legislator and budgetary authority makes the EP an interesting research object in the first place. In conjunction with the ongoing debate about the EU’s democratic deficit and the continuous demands for parliamentary involvement in EU politics, it is more important than ever to gain an understanding of how parliamentarians from 28 member states with different national, political and cultural backgrounds practice and organise parliamentary work. In response, this book delivers an explorative study on Intergroups, more specifically on MEPs’ engagement in Intergroups in the EP . Intergroups are informal cross-party, cross-committee groupings bringing together MEPs from different political groups, parliamentary committees and member states as well as representatives of civil society and other EU institutions in their meetings. The 7th EP (2009–2014) recorded 27 officially recognised Intergroups covering a wide range of themes from ageing and intergenerational solidarity to climate change, from trade unions to animal welfare, from disability to urban areas, to name just a few (European Parliament, 2013a). Numbers of members ranged from 12 MEPs (Intergroup ‘Extreme Poverty and Human Rights ’) to 126 MEPs (Intergroup ‘Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development ’) (European Parliament, 2013a).

Research on Intergroups in the European Parliament so Far

Until now Intergroups or rather the informal dimension of EP politics have only been marginally addressed in the literature. So far contemporary research on the Parliament has concentrated on four inter-related areas: (1) work on the general development and functioning of the EP ⁴ ; (2) research on the political behaviour and EP elections ⁵ ; (3) research on the internal politics and organisation of the EP ⁶ ; and (4) examination of the inter-institutional bargaining between the EP, the Council and the European Commission ⁷ (Hix et al., 2003, p. 193). Within these areas, only scattered accounts on Intergroups are provided. A precious few publications refer to them marginally in the context of: the EP’s general development and functions (Corbett et al., 2016; Judge & Earnshaw, 2008); organised interest representation and (corporate) lobbying (Bouwen, 2003; Greenwood, 2003, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 1997); civil society (Dutoit, 2001, 2009; Mény, 2009); and political representation and the development of a European Party System (Andeweg, 1995). Thereby, the works by Jacobs and Corbett (1990), Jacobs, Corbett, and Shackleton (1992, 1995), Corbett et al. (2000, 2007, 2011, 2016) on the EP and Dutoit (2001) provide the most extensive, though rather descriptive, account of the evolution of Intergroups in the EP since 1979. Corbett et al. (2016) provide continuous updates on the history, objectives and working methods of selected Intergroups. ⁸ In these works, the focus is predominately on Intergroups, and thus on the meso-level, while the reasoning of MEPs to engage in Intergroups is only briefly addressed (Corbett et al., 2011). The very recent works of Nedergaard and Jensen (2014) and Ringe , Victor, and Carman (2013) underline the increasing popularity and importance of Intergroups as study object in EP contemporary research.

With regard to informal governance , EP research has so far concentrated on the EP as an institution and its role in informal institution-building, institutional change and inter-institutional processes. The work of Farrell and Héritier (2003) shows how the co-decision process has led to the emergence of informal institutions and decision-making procedures; see also Héritier (2012), Reh, Héritier, Bressanelli, and Koop (2011), and Häge and Kaeding (2007) on the co-decision procedure . Crum (2012, p. 354) conceptualises the EP as a ‘driving force in informal institution-building’ in Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Hence, EP intra-institutional informal arrangements have been marginalised so far. In response, this book aims to open up the institutional black box of the EP, to get closer to the MEPs and beyond descriptions of the EP’s formal, institutional structures at the same time, focusing on intra-institutional informal arrangements, such as Intergroups.

Research on the EP and EU institutions in general is accompanied by the problem that these institutions ‘have no exact counterparts in national political systems’ (Judge & Earnshaw, 2008, p. 10). Attempts to locate the EP with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Opening up Institutional Black Boxes: The European Parliament from a Sociological Perspective
• 3. Intergroups in the European Parliament: Institutionalisation and Regulation
• 4. Who Are the MEPs Making up Intergroups? A Sociopolitical Analysis
• 5. Finding Allies: The Intergroup as Bridging Social Capital
• 6. Seeking Information: The Intergroup as Informational Capital
• 7. Conversion and Mobilisation of Political Capital
• 8. Conclusion
• Back Matter