In the European Parliament, a ‘rapporteur’ is an MEP appointed to oversee the drafting and presentation of reports. This role is highly important in the Parliament, with rapporteurs being elected to the position by their fellow MEPs. But does the distribution of these appointments favour certain states over others? Steffen Hurka, Michael Kaeding and Lukas Obholzer present findings from a study of the allocation of rapporteurs in the 2009-14 parliament. They find that new member states that joined in the 2004 and 2007 enlargements were underrepresented among rapporteurs and were therefore less able to influence EU legislation than older member states

Hurka, Steffen

Kaeding, Michael

Obholzer, Lukas

LSE Research Online

8/6/2015New member states are structurally underrepresented inimportant rapporteur positions in the European Parliamentblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/08/06/new-member-states-are-structurally-underrepresented-in-important-rapporteur-positions-in-the-european-parliament/In the European Parliament, a ‘rapporteur’ is an MEP appointed to oversee the drafting andpresentation of reports. This role is highly important in the Parliament, with rapporteurs beingelected to the position by their fellow MEPs. But does the distribution of these appointments favourcertain states over others? Steﬀen Hurka, Michael Kaeding and Lukas Obholzer present ﬁndingsfrom a study of the allocation of rapporteurs in the 2009-14 parliament. They ﬁnd that new memberstates that joined in the 2004 and 2007 enlargements were underrepresented among rapporteursand were therefore less able to inﬂuence EU legislation than older member states.In a recent study, we have assessed rapporteurship allocation in the seventh European Parliament(EP, 2009-14). Our research produced surprising and potentially concerning results: We found thatMembers of the European Parliament (MEPs) from newer Member states remain considerably lesslikely to act as rapporteurs even during the second term after the Eastern enlargement (2009-14).Most importantly, this trend also holds for shadow reports, which are a stepping stone toward leadrapporteurships and easier to obtain.The reason why this is highly relevant is simple: The European Parliament’s inﬂuence in thedecision-making process of the European Union is steadily growing. Among MEPs, the rapporteur isthe “primary legislator”. Rapporteurs and their “shadows” draft the legislature’s opinion andnegotiate on its behalf with the European Commission (Commission) and Council of Ministers(Council).As a consequence, they are the linchpin of intra and inter-institutional decision-making and haveimportant procedural privileges. As the importance of rapporteurs has increased, they have beenmore tightly controlled by shadow rapporteurs from competing party groups. ‘Shadows’ follow the progress of a ﬁlethrough committee and plenary, and can for instance join the rapporteur in closed-door trilogues with theCommission and Council.During the period since the admission of 13 new member states to the European Union starting in 2004, previousresearch has found clear evidence that MEPs from new member states have been underrepresented in these keyposts. This might have been due to a ‘learning phase’: that is MEPs from the new member states were expected toneed some time to get used to the proceedings of the EP in order to get into inﬂuential positions. Hence, we did notexpect any systematic diﬀerence between MEPs from old and newer member states in rapporteurship allocation inthe seventh European Parliament – but our study suggests the opposite.Report allocation in the EP ten years later: still no level playing ﬁeldWe re-examined the original argument and investigated the allocation of rapporteurships and shadowrapporteurships in the 2009-14 term (EP7) to MEPs from one of the Member States that joined the EU in 2004 and2007. Our dataset includes the allocation of 2,161 reports (see Figure 1) and 6,589 shadow reports to 851 MEPs,i.e. the population of reports retrievable from the website of the EP after the last plenary session in April 2014. Theresults show a clear deﬁcit in rapporteurships for MEPs from the new Member States despite the fact that thedistribution of reports is highly proportional to the party groups’ seat shares in the plenary. For shadow reports, ourresults suggest that underrepresentation is particularly pronounced for politically important co-decision ﬁles.1/5Figure 1: Report allocation across party groups and procedures (EP7)Note: For more information on the calculations, see the authors’ accompanying journalarticle. For more information on the groups, see: European People’s Party (EPP); ProgressiveAlliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D); Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe(ALDE); The Greens–European Free Alliance (Greens–EFA); European Conservatives andReformists (ECR); European United Left–Nordic Green Left (EUL/GUE-NGL); Europe ofFreedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD – formerly EFD). NI refers to MEPs that are notmembers of any group.Figure 2: Report allocation of newcomer MEPs (percentage of MEPs with at least one report)2/5Note: For more information, see the authors’ accompanying journal article.In a nutshell, Figure 2 shows that the percentage of newcomer MEPs who obtained at least one report isconsistently higher among MEPs from the EU-15 than for those from the EU-13. Speciﬁcally, the diﬀerence betweenthe two groups amounts to 22 percentage points for all reports and 21 percentage points for co-decision reports.Accordingly, the under-performance of MEPs from the accession states is not merely a result of a lack of politicalexperience. If this were the case, their rates of report allocation would be similar to the rates of newcomer MEPsfrom the EU-15.If we model the counts of allocated reports and derive predicted probabilities, an interesting picture emerges, shownin Figure 3 below. For all shadow reports, no signiﬁcant diﬀerence between the two groups of newcomer MEPs canbe discerned, although our models show that MEPs from the accession states are in general signiﬁcantlyunderrepresented for co-decision shadow reports (see the accompanying paper for more details). For all leadrapporteurships, the probability of receiving no report at all is clearly higher for newcomer MEPs from the accessionstates than for their colleagues from the EU15. Interestingly, newcomer MEPs from the accession states are evenmore likely to draft exactly one report, but their fortunes are reversed for two or more reports, leading to theaggregate pattern of underrepresentation.Figure 3: Report allocation: predicted probabilities for newcomer MEPs (all reports)3/5Note: For more information, see the authors’ accompanying journal article.Furthermore, our study revealed additional information about the allocation of rapporteurships: Chairmen andchairwomen received more reports than regular or substitute committee members, due to the fact that they areresponsible for the drafting of reports which are not acquired by any political group. The results also underscoreprevious ﬁndings on the importance of attendance rates for the allocation of reports. Party groups reward activeMEPs with inﬂuential positions in the legislative process. Also an MEP’s seniority is relevant for his or her chancesto obtain rapporteurships, which corroborates recent ﬁndings.Variation across diﬀerent types of legislative proceduresOur results suggest, however, that the relationship does not hold across all types of legislative procedures. Moresenior MEPs are especially active in the drafting of consultation reports, which raises the suspicion that experience(and perhaps good contacts) are particularly relevant if the EP does not have any clear-cut procedural power. Ourresults do not conﬁrm a gender discrimination eﬀect in the report allocation process. Female MEPs were neithermore nor less likely to obtain reports than their male colleagues across all legislative procedures. Finally, we ﬁndthat MEPs whose home countries held the Council Presidency were underrepresented in the allocation of co-decision reports. However, this ﬁnding does not hold for the other legislative procedures.This raises important questions: chieﬂy, why has the under-representation of MEPs from formerly new MemberStates in the post of rapporteur become a structural feature of the EP? There are three main readings of theunexpected results: Firstly, the incentive set of this group of MEPs may diﬀer from that of MEPs from older memberstates, making them less willing to take on the workload that accrues to a (shadow) rapporteur. Secondly, MEPsfrom these countries may adopt diﬀerent methods for eﬀective representation of their constituents’ interests andtherefore have distinct skill sets. As a consequence, they may be better suited for other positions or activities thanthose of the rapporteur. Thirdly, there might be a systematic bias in the rapporteurship allocation process,disadvantaging MEPs from newer member states. As of now, it is an open question which of these arguments hasthe most explanatory power.In any case, MEPs from newer Member States are less able to inﬂuence European legislation as a result of their4/5absence from inﬂuential rapporteur positions. This might adversely aﬀect the legitimacy of European integration inthese countries. Therefore, MEPs from the newer member states may want to thrust themselves more actively intothe competition for rapporteurships during the 2014-19 legislative term. National parties might want to optimise theircandidate selection in order to ascertain that a share of their MEPs are committed to a longer term career at theEuropean level.For more information on the study, see the authors’ article in the Journal of Common Market StudiesPlease read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: © European Union 2014 – European Parliament  (CC-BY-SA-ND-NC-3.0)Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1W3bhwo _________________________________About the authorsSteﬀen Hurka – University of MunichSteﬀen Hurka is a post-doctoral researcher at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Scienceat the University of Munich (LMU). His main research interests include European Union politics ingeneral and the legislative organization of the European Parliament in particular. Related articlescan be found in the Journal of European Public Policy, European Union Politics and the Journal ofCommon Market Studies. The other main focus of his studies is on the politics of morality policy.Together with Christoph Knill and Christian Adam, he recently co-edited the book “On the Road toPermissiveness? Change and Convergence of Moral Regulation in Europe” with Oxford UniversityPress.Michael Kaeding – University of Duisburg-EssenMichael Kaeding is Professor of European Integration and European Union Politics and adpersonam Jean Monnet Chair at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (CoE) in Bruges, and Visiting Fellow at theEuropean Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), the Netherlands. In addition, he is associatededitor of the Journal of European Integration and author of articles and books on topics such as thesocial selectivity in voter turnout across multi-level systems, European elections, themicromanagement of EU institutions, delegated and implementing acts, and the implementation ofEU rules, norms and values across Europe.Lukas Obholzer – LSELukas Obholzer is Fellow in European Politics at the Government Department at the London Schoolof Economics and Political Science. He holds a PhD from the LSE’s European Institute. Hisresearch focuses on bicameral decision-making, legislative organisation and European Unionpolitics.5/5

New member states are structurally underrepresented in important rapporteur positions in the European Parliament

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