Proving Their Worth? The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Members of the European Parliament

Recent trade negotiations in the EU have provoked unprecedented levels of controversy, in particular the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US. One crucial channel for public contestation is the European Parliament (EP) which, following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, has to give consent to international agreements. Thus, this article sets out to answer the question: During the dispute over TTIP, did members of the EP (MEPs) engage in the public debate, and if so, how? If they engage in debates, what characterises their engagement: Do they engage with voter concerns, do they engage in a responsive manner, and do they contribute to politicisation as quite a few feared? Building on an analysis of newspaper coverage and plenary debates in the EP, the article shows that many supporters of TTIP attempted to de-politicise the debate, while opponents most frequently evoked ‘the voice of the people’ to politicise TTIP. Thus, MEPs do not only respond to politicisation, they also attempt to make politicisation happen by evoking public concerns. The article highlights the multifaceted relationship between responsiveness and politicisation, where claims responding to voter concerns, are used both to incite contestation and alleviate it

Introduction to “Out of the Shadows, Into the Limelight: Parliaments and Politicisation”

The Lisbon Treaty gave the European Parliament extensive new powers and its consent is now required for the vast majority of EU international agreements. At the same time, national parliaments—and even regional ones—are increasingly asserting their powers over areas of European governance that were traditionally dominated by the executive. Exerting influence and conducting oversight is time-consuming, however. Particularly at the EU-level parliaments cannot influence or scrutinise every policy dossier with equal rigour. A key factor directing parliamentary attention seems to be the ‘politicisation’ of an issue. In other words, the amount of contestation and attention given to a particular issue seems to affect parliamentary activity. This thematic issue seeks to assess how politicisation affects the role parliaments play within the system of EU governance. In particular, the contributions aim to answer the over-arching question of whether politicisation has an impact on how parliaments seek to influence policy-making and hold the EU executives to account. Furthermore, we raise the question of whether and how politicisation affects the role of parliaments as arenas for contestation and communication of different political interests. Jointly, the findings provide the empirical foundations for a more comprehensive debate regarding the democratic implications of politicisation. Politicisation puts pressure on parliaments to act, but parliamentarians themselves may also find it in their interest to instigate contestation. This thematic issue addresses these questions by shedding light on both the European Parliament and national parliaments and examines different policy-fields reaching from climate change and trade, to financial affairs and the Common Fisheries Policy

Can you keep a secret? How the European Parliament got access to sensitive documents in the area of security and defence

In 2002, the European Parliament and the Council concluded an Interinstitutional Agreement (IIA) on access to sensitive documents in the area of security and defence. The agreement gives the Parliament privileged access to documents that are withheld from the public. This article suggests two explanations of why this agreement was established. One proposes that the Parliament was able to convince the Council of the Parliament’s legitimate right of access. The other explanation puts forward that it was the Parliament’s bargaining strategy that secured the deal. It is argued that both explanations are necessary to capture the key features of the negotiation process and the outcomeaccess to documents; Council of Ministers; CFSP/ESDP; European Parliament; transparency

Influence beyond formal powers: parliamentarization of European Union security policy

© 2018, © The Author(s) 2018. The European Union’s foreign and security policy is commonly described as an intergovernmental affair. Despite limited formal powers, several studies suggest that the European Parliament has increased its influence on the Union’s foreign and security policy. This article argues that, to gauge the significance of parliamentary participation, it is necessary to look beyond the notion of formal parliamentary rights and to take into account informal influence. The analysis shows how informal avenues of influence are crucial at certain stages of the decision-making process, and points to factors that constrain and enable parliamentary impact. Furthermore, it emphasises the important role that parliaments play in scrutinising security policy, which is a crucial component of democratic governance. In this particular field where there is little legislation, the establishment of solid procedures and practices for oversight and control can also be a significant indicator of parliamentary influence.status: publishe

Unified in response to rising powers? China, Russia and EU-US relations

How do the EU and the US respond to rising powers making territorial claims? Are they unified in their approaches, and if not, where do their policies diverge? Transatlantic unity or dissent in response to main geopolitical issues has implications for our understanding of transatlantic security relations and for the future of global power-relations more broadly. We explore EU-US positions and responses to Chinese advances in the South China Sea and Russia’s actions in the Ukraine. Two hypotheses guide our analysis: First, that they cooperate to balance against these powers, hence strengthening transatlantic relations. Secondly, that the EU is developing policies independently of the US, thus weakening EU-US relations. Our findings suggest that despite a general coherence of American and European stance in both cases, the level of coordination varies. Instead, we find signs of weakening EU-US security relations as the EU develops a more autonomous policy vis-à-vis the US. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/

Trade and the transnational cleavage in European party politics

Theorists of the transnational cleavage, defined as a political reaction against European integration and immigration, also regularly conceptualise international trade preferences as a component of this contemporary societal divide. Yet empirical analyses of this cleavage focus on the former two topics, while trade and the transnational cleavage has not been systematically investigated. Making use of a new item in the 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey that measures party support for protection of domestic producer groups versus support for trade liberalisation, we examine the applicability of explanations for European integration positioning for the topic of trade. The results show that party positions on international trade correlate with parties’ underlying two-dimensional ideology: parties of the economic left and culturally conservative parties support trade protection. The findings advance previous studies on the transnational cleavage and party positioning on trade, and demonstrate the continued importance of economic factors in driving patterns of trade protection

Who Teams up with the European Parliament? Examining Multilevel Party Cooperation in the European Union

Abstract As in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade

Who Teams up with the European Parliament? Examining Multilevel Party Cooperation in the European Union

As in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade

How does expert knowledge travel between EU institutions? The case of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Expertise has been highlighted as a central source of power and legitimacy within the European Union system, and has been pointed to as one explanation of the relative influence of EU institutions in policy-making processes. This paper investigates such inter-institutional differences by asking: To what extent, and how, does expertise from the Commission influence the European Parliament’s positions? We explore this question by analysing the transfer of expertise from the Commission to the Parliament in the case of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Our analysis finds clear differences in what type of expert knowledge the EP incorporated– as well as how they use expertise. In the beginning of the period analysed, the Commission’s expert input is broadly used by the EP and largely unquestioned. Some years later, there is much less reference to external expert and Commission sources and the EP is also much more critical, and explicitly questions conclusions that was supported two years earlier. In our final discussion, we propose that this change over time might be due to the politicisation of TTIP, and discuss how and why this is the case. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/