Appraising the EP’s Role in Global Risk Governance: EU Studies Meets International Political Economy

The European Parliament (EP) is increasingly recognized as a political actor in the external relations of the EU, particularly in fields of governance beyond CFSP that concern the regulation of economic, environmental and social risk at the international level. Existing research on the involvement of the EP in fields such as Justice and Home Affairs or Climate Change policy demonstrate an often meaningful but highly varied degree of influence, mostly relying on institutionalist approaches from different theoretical angles to explain the role (and often, restraint) of the EP. Against this background, the paper argues that beyond existing case studies, we lack a more comprehensive account for the parliamentarization of the EU as a global actor that connects endogenous, EU-specific variables with insights into the broader context of the international political economy of global (risk) governance and the ability of the EU to act as a global policy-shaper. Addressing this gap, the paper presents a theoretical framework that integrates three potential sources of EP influence on the international level: namely, party political factors within the EP, its institutional involvement and factors concerning the regulatory capacity of the EU in a broader global context of decision-making, particularly in the EU’s interaction with the United States. In its empirical part, the paper investigates case studies from two fields of EU external action with highly different degrees of EU regulatory capacity: namely, climate change mitigation policy and rule-setting on data protection and disclosure in the context of anti-terrorism policy.