Is the European Parliament still a policy champion for environmental interests?

Abstract

Executive Summary A wide range of interest groups target the European Parliament (EP) and MEPs have a reputation for being particularly open to diffuse interests, who, due to their limited resources, use 'friendly' MEPs to put pressure on the European Commission and the Council. The notion of the EP representing diffuse as opposed to concentrated interests, conflicts with the broader political science literature on interest groups that dwells on business bias. The general expectation in the literature is for concentrated groups (such as the automobile industry) to prevail over diffuse interests (such as environmental interests). This article considers whether this is a case of conventional wisdom confirmed -or a sectoral exceptionalism. In fact, there are good reasons to doubt the EP's reputation as a policy champion for diffuse interests. Much of our current knowledge about the EP's interest group politics stems from a time when the EP's legislative powers were more limited. Within a relatively short time span the EP has evolved from a token 'multi-lingual talking shop' to, what some researchers have named, one of the most powerful elected legislatures in the world. Arguably, as the powers of the EP have increased, so has attention from interest groups. Few interest groups now dare leave the parliamentary arena to their opponents, and most interest groups adopt a belt-and-braces approach in which 'the institutional trio' (the European Commission, Council and the EP) is lobbied throughout the policy process. The increased powers raises the question of whether the EP still privileges diffuse interests or simply reinforces the advantages of concentrated interests. This question is addressed in this article by examining one recent regulation: Regulation 2011/510/EC on the reduction of CO 2 emissions from light commercial vehicles. Based on processtracing of EU documents and lobbying letters, and interviews with MEPs, EP officials and interest groups, this article shows that the EP is no longer an environmental champion, but instead appears to be more of an environmental pragmatist. Three factors contribute to this change: asymmetric lobbying from industry, a change in the EP's negotiating strategy and increased cooperation between the EP committees. These changes have reduced the privileged position once held by diffuse interests, and provided concentrated interests with r

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“…This increases the need to find compromises in order to maintain the EP's reputation as an effective institution, even if that means that a lot of MEPs will not be 100 % content with the result (Interview 1). These findings are in line with Rasmussen's (2012) argument that the EP has increasingly been departing from its traditional role and has turned into an "environmental pragmatist", due to asymmetric lobbying from the industry (see also below), a strategic use of "realistic" negotiating positions towards the Council, and increasing cooperation and coordination between EP committees. Similarly, other scholars argue that an increase in the Parliament's formal power, namely the co-decision procedure, has led to a decline in its willingness and ability to adopt radical environmental amendments and to set the wider EU environmental policy agenda (Burns & Carter, 2010;Burns, Carter & Worsfold, 2012).…”

“…Likewise, several studies document the predominance of business in lobbying on EU environmental policy in general and EU climate policy in particular (Bunea, 2013;Coen, 2007;Greenwood, 2011;Knill & Liefferink, 2007;Rasmussen, 2012). Fagan-Watson et al (2015) show how industry associations such as Business Europe, Fuels Europe (formerly known as EUROPIA), the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP), the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) and the European Steel Association (EUROFER), established formal and informal relationships with policymakers, submitted position papers and policy proposals, and stayed engaged in every subsequent stage of the policy process, also functioning as a "revolving door" between the public and the private sectors.…”

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“…Indeed, the continued institutional protection of economic interest, which was evident in the 2011 Eurovignette Directive, supports the argument in the existing environmental literature (Baker, ; Burns and Carter, ; Rasmussen, ). Overall, the obstacles to EPI have not been addressed by institutional reform.…”

“…However, this article has shown that neither co‐decision nor QMV has resulted in strong EPI, partly because of diverging interests in the Council and partly because the EP has become less environmentally progressive. This supports the conclusions of other recent research (Burns et al ., 2012a,b; Rasmussen, ), which have demonstrated that the EP has become more environmentally pragmatic. The Eurovignette Directive shows that the rapporteur wanted to reach a policy outcome and had to be pragmatic regarding the agreement he could reach with the Council.…”

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“…Given that the EP has been populated by (a sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller share of) members from leftist and green parties, NGOs have been able to gain comparatively more access here. The EP also traditionally sees itself as an environmental voice in European politics (Burns 2013;Rasmussen 2012).…”