Friday, July 14, 2017
John McIntyre - Room 201 (University of Glasgow)
What role does the European Parliament (EP) have in current European Union (EU) politics and how can we account for it? Recent contributions on the “new intergovernmentalism”[1] observe a transformation of EU politics in the form of fading supranationalisation, where supranationalisation means the empowerment of supranational actors such as the EP. These contributions see the EP’s role limited especially in post-Maastricht policies like economic governance compared to the more traditional policies of the community method. Yet, when we compare economic governance to the common commercial policy, particularly the shaping of external trade agreements, we observe in both policies an empowerment of the EP. Drawing on inter-institutional bargaining theory,[2] we argue that the EP was able to significantly push its role beyond the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. Based on 23 interviews with EU officials, we analyse the strategies employed by the EP vis-à-vis the Commission and Council to empower itself in two policies that have produced major decision-making outputs and that have been highly topical and salient since the Lisbon Treaty. Rather than fading supranationalisation we thus observe an increasing empowerment of the EP across policies.
[1] Fabbrini, Sergio / Puetter, Uwe (2016): Integration without supranationalisation: studying the lead roles of the European Council and the Council in post-Lisbon EU politics. In: Journal of European Integration, vol. 38(5): 481-495.
[2] Farrell, Henry / Héritier, Adrienne (2003): Formal and Informal Institutions Under Codecision: Continuous Constitution-Building in Europe. In: Governance, vol. 16(4): 577-600.
