The financial crisis and the European Parliament: An analysis of the Two-Pack legislation

Abstract

The left–right line of conflict has been the dominant dimension of decision-making in the European Parliament since 1979. A pro-/anti-European Union integration dimension is of secondary importance. Limited evidence exists on the conditions under which these different dimensions matter. This study examines parliamentary decision-making about the so-called Two-Pack, which moved responsibilities about budgetary decision-making to the European Commission. The article uses in-depth interviews, textual analysis of committee debates and roll call voting analysis in order to determine which lines of conflict matter at which stage of decision-making. The evidence indicates that left–right division is dominant in the informal stage preceding committee debates, while both the pro-/anti-European Union and the left/right dimensions matter during the committee stage, whereas for plenary votes, the pro-/anti-European Union dimension is crucial.

MEP Responses to Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Poland. An Analysis of Agenda‐Setting and Voting Behaviour

“…In line with recent research, we analyse roll-call votes using logistic regression analysis, in which individual vote decisions by legislators are used as the dependent variables and quantities of interests as the independent variables, such as party (group) affiliation and ideological positions (Otjes and van der Veer, 2016;Roger et al, 2017). Using this method, we select a small number of votes on which we regress the voting decisions of individual legislators as a function of ideological and party group affiliation.…”

In the eye of the storm? The European Parliament, the environment and the EU’s crises

“…Yet, there have been relatively few studies of the impact of the crisis upon the Parliament, with those that have emerged generally focussing upon economic governance and legislation (e.g. see Schoeller and HŽritier 2019;Bressanelli and Chelotti 2018;Roger et al 2017;OÕKeefe et al 2016) with few focussing on the EPÕs environmental behaviour (Burns and Carter 2012 is an exception). Given that the crises broke as new and more environmentally-sceptic states joined the EU; as a wave of populism saw the success of typically more environmentally-sceptic parties from the right in the 2009 and 2014 European elections; and as the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in 2009, extending the OLP to over 85 policy areas, thereby considerably extending the EPÕs workload; it seems reasonable to expect disruption in environmental policy-making.…”

Radical right parties and European economic integration: Evidence from the seventh European Parliament

“…‘The proposal for a regulation of the EP and of the Council on common provisions for monitoring and assessing draft budgetary plans and ensuring the correction of excessive deficit of the Member States in the euro area’ is a good illustration of this. This proposal was part of the ‘Two-Pack’ legislation which ‘contributed to the Europeanization of economic governance by strengthening the monitoring processes of national economies at the European level’ (Roger et al., 2017: 7). As expected, RRPs in the rejecting and pro-welfare conditional clusters opposed this legislation since it imposed tighter controls on national budgets.…”