“Undermining Critical Mass: The Impact of Treaty Reforms on EP Decision-Making Culture”

Having attained the level of “critical mass” (over 30% of the seats) over a decade ago, female MEPs helped to  bring about substantial,  gender-friendly changes in the political culture and modes of decision-making characterizing the European  Parliament per se. The 2014 electoral outcomes  could nonetheless  prove  very disruptive to the pro-active, cooperative EP culture, due to increasing partisan fragmentation within  member-state delegations as well as across the larger partisan spectrum – given the stronger presence of openly “anti-EU” representatives from UKIP (UK) and the AfD (Germany), inter alia. This paper explores potential “counter-balancing forces” and  operational procedures that could serve to limit the threat these new forces – also inclined to oppose gender equality initiatives -- could pose to the progressive nature of supranational lawmaking.