This article demonstrates that the European Parliament has increasingly voted with the Council for a more restrictive position on irregular migration and asylum since obtaining co-decision authority in these areas in 2005, in contrast to its previous liberal position. Roll-call votes in the fifth and sixth European Parliaments (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009) in the field of irregular migration and asylum were analyzed, and it was found that an abrupt change in voting behaviour of many MEPs, particularly those members belonging to two of its main liberal-leaning parties, the S&D and ELDR, is evidently linked to the change of authority of the EP. Apparently, there is an inverse correlation between the level of decision-making authority and the freedom to vote for a liberal immigration and asylum policy. The author suggests several explanations for this behaviour, including the need for MEPs to be flexible in working with the Council in order to pass legislation.
The impact of political events on media’s conflict coverage prism is widely established. To assess the role of mounting tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe in 2013–2014 on German media’s coverage prism of Muslim-related conflicts, this article compares coverage of the 2008 and 2014 Israeli military operations in Gaza by three major German newspapers. The empirical analysis indicates a dramatic rise in the use of religious terms in 2014, most notably in conservative newspaper Die Welt, and offers evidence of a shift from politics-centered framing of the 2008 Gaza operation to a more religious-centered framing of the 2014 Gaza War. We discuss wider implications of the findings, including their support for the relevance of the clash-of-civilizations theory to contemporary media’s conflict coverage modus operandi.
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