When politicization meets ideology: the European Parliament and free trade agreements

Abstract

Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has considerably increased its competencies in European Union (EU) trade policy. At the same time, a ‘new generation’ of free trade agreements (FTAs), including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States, Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, and the agreement with Japan, have been negotiated by the European Commission. Although existing literature has tackled the process of the EP's institutional self-empowerment in this policy area, there is no systematic research investigating the lines of conflict within the EP over FTAs. Through a newly collected dataset of all EP plenary debates between 2009 and 2019 on six relevant FTAs, we extract EP Members’ (MEPs) preferences by means of a manual textual analysis. We then test the explanatory power of the two traditional lines of cleavages within the EP over MEPs stated preferences: position on the left-right axis and support for EU integration. We find that both these dimensions fundamentally shape the conflict in the EP over FTAs. The impact of these two ideological cleavages is magnified in the context of politicized FTAs, namely the TTIP and CETA. Through these findings, the paper significantly contributes to the research on competition in the EP and, more broadly, to the understanding of EU trade policy and its emerging politicization dynamics.

The National Legislatures in the Enlargement of Mercosur: Paraguay’s Acceptance of Venezuela and Bolivia

“…A note of caution is due here to mention that even if parliaments may oppose certain foreign policy agreements, this happens in special situations—with more politicized bills (Migliorati and Vignoli 2022; Kesgin and Kaarbo 2010; Duina and Raunio 2007). This caveat helps to distinguish between ordinary legislative procedures, where parliamentarians tend to agree with what the government puts forward, and a few bills that attract more attention and become divisive issues or are rejected (Ribeiro et al 2020; Ribeiro and Oliveira 2018; Wildavsky 1966).…”

Between Ideology and Nationality: Drivers of Legislative Oversight in the European Parliament's Economic Dialogues

“…In connection to the euro crisis, several studies demonstrated the impact of pro‐/anti‐European positions on the behaviour of MEPs (Otjes and van der Veer 2016; Blumenau and Lauderdale 2018). By contrast, there is less research on the role of nationality as a driver of voting behaviour; if anything, such studies examine parliamentary speeches (Proksch and Slapin 2010) or debates (Vesan and Corti 2019; Migliorati and Vignoli 2021) as opposed to roll‐call votes. Overall, existing evidence overwhelmingly suggests that ideology remains the strongest factor influencing MEPs' preferences, at least when it comes to ex ante dimensions of parliamentary activity.…”