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This article investigates how informal rules in the European Union change in the periods between formal treaty revisions. On the basis of a case study on the White Paper on Governance presented by the European Commission in July 2001, it shows how institutional change is driven by conflict between the Commission and the European Parliament. The conflict concerns the development of informal rules to structure the interaction of the Commission and the Parliament with Europe's civil society. The interaction with civil society organisations is very important for the EU bodies because it allows them to acquire resources that are indispensable in order to fulfil and expand their organisational role. An additional aim of this article is to examine how these institutional developments might influence the long-term development of formal treaty rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the regulatory developments in the banking sector in the European Union (EU). It mentions the decision of EU Commissioner Michel Barnier to appoint members of the High-Level Expert Group on structural aspects of the banking sector and a consultation launched by the EU Commission the general orientation of European company law. It cites the decision of EU Commission to prohibit the proposed merger between Deutsche Börse AG and NYSE Euronext Inc. and a study published by the EU Parliament which tackles the situation of the venture capital industry in the EU. It also notes the discussion paper published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) which explains the key concepts of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM) Directive.

Copyright of Social Education / Socialinis Ugdymas is the property of Vytautas Magnus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ever since they first entered the European Parliament in 1979, the EU has proven to be a strong legitimising tool for far right parties, providing them with funding, visibility and a higher degree of credibility and respectability. While recent literature has explored some of these dynamics, the role of the far right's ideological positioning on Europe as a source of public legitimacy has been neglected. This paper argues that as a relatively new and contentious political issue, Europe can function as a powerful ideological resource for far right parties by allowing them to convey a more acceptable political message. This argument is illustrated through a case study of two key aspects of the Rassemblement National's ideological approach to the European Union: the party's claim to be pro-European but anti-EU and its opposition to EU integration on grounds of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) has often criticized the agencification of the European Union. Yet in practice it often uses its legislative powers to strengthen the powers and independence of European agencies. To explain this paradox, this paper analyses the six cases where the 2004-2009 EP legislated to create a new European agency. It argues that the Parliament overcame some of its doubts about agencification by proposing amendments which brought the legislation closer to its own legitimation beliefs. Moreover, the EP has developed a substantial repertoire of amendments which it now more or less repeats every time it is confronted with a proposal for a new agency. Many of these amendments are designed to shore up control of agencies, sometimes in novel ways which suggest that the Parliament has in part made its peace with agencification by becoming more amenable to the control of agencies by methods involving multiple principals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue for the introduction of lotteries as a decision-making procedure for the creation of policy in modern democracies. Our suggestions are focused on the political system of the European Union. We start our line of argument by bringing to readers' attention the recent renaissance of the lottery in democratic practices and political theory. Next we follow the rich body of literature on policy-making in the European Union and identify three aspects of the European political system which are normatively problematic. In the last sections of the paper, we suggest dealing with these problems by the implementation of a system of decision-by-lot. Our reform agenda includes: (1) a weighted lottery in order to distribute a reduced number of positions within the European Commission among the European Union member states; (2) the drawing of lots for the members, the chairpersons and the rapporteurs of the European Parliament's committees; and finally (3) the introduction of a second chamber of the European Parliament whose members would be chosen by lottery among all European Union citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upgrading of the European Commission and the European Parliament's role in the EU policy-process in 1999 might have been expected to herald a shift away from the previous security- and control-orientation of asylum policy. No such shift occurred. This paper traces the continuity in EU asylum policy's trajectory to the continuity in its 'policy-image': actors seeking to fashion institutional configurations in which they can more effectively assert their preferences can facilitate this institutional change by shifting the 'image' of a policy – in other words, they can highlight new or neglected problems, creating broader pressure for these to be dealt with by new actors in new venues. We disaggregate policy-images into two elements: an element justifying an actor's function in policy-making, and an element justifying the pursuit of its substantive preferences. We argue that institutional change laid down in the Treaty of Amsterdam was facilitated by a policy-image that lacked the latter element. e newly empowered actors have subsequently struggled to assert their substantive preferences despite their institutional upgrade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights key issues and trends for the performance of PES and allies in the 2014 European Elections. Hence a historical background analysis is provided to observe the evolving balance of representation in the EU Parliament across three decades. Moreover, the paper aims at identifying the key member states for an improved result for the S&D group in terms of seats. To this extent, major obstacles are found both in the declining electoral support for the Left at a national level and in the possible prevalence of a second order model boosting the hard-eurosceptical populist protest against the current EU institutions. Particularly, the latter is the case in France, Italy and the United Kingdom. For this reason the Europeanisation of the EP election is taken as a crucial factor for the electoral campaigning, along with the nomination of the candidate for President of the European Commission as an aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Scientific Annals of the 'Al. I. Cuza' University, Iasi. Sociology & Social Work / Analele Stiintifice ale Universitatii 'Al. I. Cuza' Iasi Sociologie si Asistenta Sociala is the property of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted on 9 March 2011 the Directive on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare. This Directive emerged as a result of the Court of Justice's jurisprudence on social security coverage of healthcare obtained outside the Member State where the patient has social security protection. The aim of this paper is to investigate the Directive and determine whether it will add (once transposed into national legal systems) to the current set of patient entitlements and make it easier for patients to obtain socially covered healthcare outside the state of social protection, and to discuss the Directive's application in Croatia once the country joins the EU. The paper analyses the Patient Mobility Directive by focusing on the issue of whether the Directive actually contributes to patient mobility in the EU and also its relationship with national social security legislation, especially in Croatia. The paper argues that the Patient Mobility Directive's impact on the actual movement of patients across borders might prove to be counterproductive in some areas, due to its limiting certain entitlements to access socially covered healthcare abroad. On the other hand, the Directive will also add to some patients' entitlements in accessing healthcare abroad and improve (from the patients' point of view) certain aspects of the overall framework for obtaining cross-border healthcare. Therefore, the Directive's impact in terms of facilitating patients' ability to obtain socially covered healthcare outside the Member State of social protection remains ambivalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses aspects of the developments in the financial regulation in Europe. It explains aspects of the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Short Selling and Certain Aspects of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) which aims to unify and harmonize a myriad of short sale rules across the European Union's (EUs) 27-nation bloc. It notes the first consultation paper on draft regulatory and implementing technical standards issued by the European Sales and Marketing Association (ESMA) in relation to the regulation. It also cites the significant differences between the draft Bill published in June 2011 and the Financial Services Bill to Parliament introduced on January 26, 2012 which reflects a significant milestone in the financial regulatory reform in Europe.

Last June's European Parliament ("EP") election was widely considered a failure. Turnout was low across Europe, and, as has been the case in every EP election since they were introduced in 1979. voters responded exclusively to domestic cues in deciding how to fill the European Union's only directly elected body. Campaigns were waged entirely on domestic issues outside of the purview of the EP, and the popularity of domestic prime ministers, who were not on the ballot, was the most important factor in determining the results. The EP is supposed to provide a popular check on the other legislative bodies in the European Union ("EU"), which are either appointed or directly controlled by member state governments, and thereby reduce the EU's "democratic deficit." Instead, the failure of EP elections to generate popular feedback on EU policy allows the deficit to fester and undermines the separation of powers inside the EU. This paper argues that the problems of EP elections are much like the problems in a variety of American state and local elections. Election laws ensure that national parties are on the ballot, and both legal limitations and strategic considerations make it difficult for these national parties to develop separate localized identities, or in the case of EP elections, Europeanized ones. Rationally ignorant voters who know little about the individual figures in these European bodies rely on the party heuristic that is available on the ballot, as it is the only relevant information that they have. Moreover, they do so even though it is unclear how closely preferences on European or local policies track preferences about national issues. The result is that national party preference ends up being reflected in these elections, despite the fact that the winners will decide policies at another level of government. Put another way, there is a "mismatch" between the institutional role the EP is asked to play in the EU's separation of powers--the voice of European citizens about EU policies--and the level of party competition at which EP elections are contested. Mismatch problems are endemic in federal systems and are generated by constitutional structures that ask more of voters than they are capable of providing. However, they can be solved or at least mitigated with election law tools. Following a procedure used in a variety of developing countries, the EU could pass a law that the EP will only seat members from those parties that both won seats from a given EU country and received a certain percentage of the vote in a quarter of EU member states. This would force the coalitions formed in the EP--the so-called "Euro-parties"--onto EP ballots, as parties would need to contest elections across Europe. Voters thus would have access to a European rather than national heuristic on the EP ballot, which would better allow them to use these elections to express preferences about EU policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new data set enumerating the population of organizations listed and/or registered as lobbyists in the European Union. In the first part of the paper we describe how we arrived at the population data set by drawing on three independent sources (CONECCS; Landmarks; European Parliament registry). We briefly discuss the validity of these registers in the context of recent substantial changes to each of them. In the second part, we present descriptive information on the number and type of groups as well as their territorial origins. In the final section, we outline potential research questions that can be addressed with the new data set for further research on the role of groups in the EU policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the increasing relevance of Islam and religion in the institutional arrangement of the EU post-Maastricht and the future policy implications for the complex political system of the EU. By adopting a combination of qualitative methodologies that are theoretically rooted in historical institutionalism and in a systemic view of the EU, the paper studies the emergence of Islam and religion as policy issues in two institutional settings, the European Commission and the European Parliament, during the 1990s and up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analysis shows a growing attention to faith communities on the part of the Commission, in the post-Maastricht context, culminating in the elaboration of semi-official avenues for encounter and dialogue with religious groups. It also indicates how, in turn, these semi-official practices and the ideas behind them have gradually imposed themselves upon multiple levels of the EU political system, thus opening up an institutional space in the EU for consultations with and 'informal policies' towards faith communities, both within and outside the EU borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Great Britain within the context of the European Union (EU) and argues that future continuation within the international body will create political challenges within the nation. It is attested that the unity of the country’s Conservative party depends upon the Prime Minister opposing any further progress toward European integration. At the same time, the paper alleges that the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats both support further European integration, particularly the strengthening of the European Parliament. Options relevant to these varying political doctrines are presented.

Second-order election models are based on several assumptions about individual-level motivations. These can be summarized by a transfer hypothesis: individuals presumably apply their evaluations of national-level phenomena to the EU level when voting in EU elections. In contrast, a suis generis hypothesis stipulates that voters evaluate the EU on its own performance terms. This paper tests these competing hypotheses. We find considerable support for both models. In the election context, where national institutions — political parties — dominate the representation process, the transfer hypothesis receives considerable support. However, we also find surprisingly strong support for the first-order hypothesis: electoral choice in EU election is influenced to a considerable extent by EU level factors. Furthermore, when voters evaluate the mechanisms of representation more broadly without a focus on elections per se, we find much more support for the first-order than the transfer hypothesis — voters clearly separate the two levels and evaluate each level on its own terms. These results have important implications, both for how we analyse voters' decisions in European elections, and how we view the sophistication of voters more broadly in the context of multi-layered institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at contributing to theoretical debates over why the European Union (EU) enlarges. Whereas existing theoretical approaches take a snapshot view of EU enlargement and focus on its synchronic determinants, this paper explores its temporal determinants. Developing a historical-institutionalist approach to EU enlargement, the paper claims that the enlargement process operates under the constraining weights of past policy choices. The paper examines and illustrates the relative merits of the existing approaches and the historical-institutionalist approach to EU enlargement through analysis of the Turkey-EU relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade ago parties were largely absent from research on and theories of EU politics. The role of parties is now a central part of the research agenda, particularly in the area of EU legislative politics. The new research on parties in EU politics has made significant theoretical contributions, led to the collection and dissemination of new datasets, and employs some of the most advanced statistical methods in contemporary European political science. What is still missing, however, is a general theory of the role and impact of political parties, which helps to explain actors' behaviour in EU politics in a range of situations. This paper sketches some of the basic elements of what might be called a 'partisan theory of EU politics', starting from a discussion of how the policy and office incentives of national parties are shaped by the EU's 'upside-down polity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we conduct a case study of EU-level debates on universal basic income (UBI) trials, as part of which we examine core contributions in the Conference on the Future of Europe, the election manifestos produced by European party groups, as well as European Parliament debates since 2009. The results indicate that parties and politicians are far more hesitant than citizens to demand UBI, while also relying proportionally more on proposing trials rather than policies. Interpreting the results, we develop a conceptual framework designed to better understand how political decisionmakers at the EU level can deal with the uncertainties involved in European social policymaking. We argue that these actors face legal, political, and suitability risks when proposing policies that would integrate the EU's social dimension. Unlike in national settings, the potential to pursue various strategies of risk reduction is limited at the EU level. However, we argue that empirical trials of social policies are particularly well-suited to insuring politicians at the EU level against risks. This insurance function is based not only on the scope of empirical trials to reduce uncertainties about policy outcomes, but also on the fact that they are inherently non-binding. By simply proposing empirical trials, actors can influence agendas, benefit from public demands, or reduce public pressure without having to take on the risks associated with implementing a fully-fledged policy proposal. We conclude that empirical trials can be understood as buffers against risks that might be used strategically by politicians, and which have the potential to break stalemates in the future development of a "Social Europe". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections to the European Parliament have been unable to capture the public’s interest— turnout remains far lower than most national elections and many who do vote appear more concerned with sending messages of approval to national political parties than electing representatives at the EU level. This paper seeks to explain why the public does not take these elections seriously. A common explanation is that the public simply does not care about EU politics. In addition to this ‘issue-based’ argument, this article considers where a lack of trust in the European Parliament itself may lead many individuals to abstain from EP elections. Using pre and post-election survey data, results suggest that perceptions of the EP indeed have a significant effect on the decision to vote in EP elections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of the European Parliament (EP) in the development of the space policy of the EU (EUSP), an important policy area that has been neglected in the political science and EU studies literature. EUSP is the offspring of the European space policy which started as a purely intergovernmental affair, but gradually acquired a supranational dimension. Although the EP did little to initiate this process, it always supported the involvement of the EU in space, and it used both its formal and informal powers to affect and promote its development. Under the consultation procedure the EP managed to become a conditional agenda setter, and under co-decision an influential legislation maker. The changes it introduced in the European global navigation satellite and Earth observation programmes relate not only to the inter-institutional balance and its controlling powers, but to a series of substantive issues also. Consequently, the activism of the EP has played an important part in the development of the EUSP, even if it was not the main force behind its inception. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rapid growth in production of the farmed Vietnamese whitefish pangasius and its trade with the European Union has provoked criticism of the fish''s environmental, social and safety credentials by actors including WWF and Members of the European Parliament and associated negative media coverage. This paper reviews the range of claims communicated about pangasius (identified as a form of mass mediated risk governance), in light of scientific evidence and analysis of data from the EU''s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feeds food safety notification system for imported seafood. This analysis shows pangasius to be generally safe, environmentally benign and beneficial for actors along the international value chains that characterise the trade. The case is made that increasingly politicised debates in Europe around risk and uncertainty are potentially counterproductive for EU seafood security and European aquaculture industry, and that the trade in pangasius can contribute to sustainable seafood consumption in a number of ways. Transparent evidence-based assessment and systems for communicating complex issues of risk for products such as pangasius are required in order to support continuance of fair and mutually beneficial trade. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The issues referring to offi cial statistics quality and reliability became the main topics of debates as far as statistical governance in Europe is concerned. The Council welcomed the Commission Communication to the European Parliament and to the Council « Towards robust quality management for European Statistics » (COM 211), appreciating that the approach and the objective of the strategy would confer the European Statistical System (ESS) the quality management framework for the coordination of consolidated economic policies. The Council pointed out that the European Statistical System management was improved during recent years, that progress was noticed in relation with high quality statistics production and dissemination within the European Union, but has also noticed that, in the context of recent fi nancial crisis, certain weaknesses were identifi ed, particularly related to quality management general framework. „Greece Case” proved that progresses were not enough for guaranteeing the complete independence of national statistical institutes and entailed the need for further consolidating ESS governance. Several undertakings are now in the preparatory stage, in accordance with the Commission Communication; these actions are welcomed, but the question arise: are these suffi cient for defi nitively solving the problem? The paper aims to go ahead in the attempt of identifying a different way, innovative (courageous!) on the long run, towards an advanced institutional structure of ESS, by setting up the European System of Statistical Institutes, similar to the European System of Central Banks, that would require a change in the Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to portray the importance of regionalist parties in the European Union. The processes of globalization and European integration in the last two decades have substantially redefined the role of the nation state in Europe. When we talk about the dimensions of politics in the European Union, we speak of a national and a supranational level, yet a third, sub-national or regional level should not be overlooked. The Europeanization of national party politics and growing cross-border cooperation has increased the importance of regionalism and regionalist parties as an important factor of European politics and party competition. This article seeks to explore the role regionalist parties play in the European Union, spanning across several groups and party families in the European Parliament, working towards a Europe of Regions, instead of a Europe of Nations or a European Federation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU is getting more and more involved in crisis management and conflict prevention around the world, building a distinct identity by means of the Common Security and Defense Policy. Even though the defence part of the CSDP is currently underdeveloped, the security component – through the civilian and military crisis management – has established the EU as a major player in this field and forged its reputation as an honest broker. The Lisbon Treaty provides a clear legal framework for the EU to pursue a comprehensive approach drawing upon all the available instruments so as to prevent conflict and manage crises, while the new NATO Strategic Concept could make the Alliance a direct competitor in civilian crisis management. This paper looks at the specific pattern of civilian crisis management as performed by the EU and assesses its post-Lisbon perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did two rounds of EU constitutional reform held within a five-year period yield very different results? The 2000 IGC resulted in the modest Treaty of Nice, whereas the 2002-04 round drafted the Constitutional Treaty which, although it did not involve major substantive changes, did mark a major symbolic step forward. This article argues that the change in outcomes can to a large degree be explained by the change in negotiating structure due to the use of a convention that drafted most of the Constitutional Treaty's text, creating a context which privileged MEPs. While the outer bounds of the possible were set by governments, the EP was able to build coalitions around ambitious yet realistic positions, leading to a final text that was a major symbolic step forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first European Parliament elections in the new Member States in Central and Eastern Europe demonstrated a profound paradox in terms of being a feedback process of European integration. At the elite level, the accession to the European Union has offered political parties and their leaders both new opportunities as well as a new set of issues with the emergence of a significant divide over the meanings of European integration. At the mass level, however, the first European Parliament elections were ignored by a vast majority of voters. This paper serves as a systematic analysis of the subject. Our objective is three-fold: to explain a lack of interest in the polls, to examine the domestic political dynamics leading to the elections and to consider the implications of the elections for the workings of the enlarged European Union. As for the prospects for European integration, it is important to note that one may no longer assume a supportive cross-party consensus in the new Member States on the EU. Rather, popular antipathy towards the EU is expected to rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the spatial positioning of over 200 political parties across 28 European Union (EU) member states in two cross-national voting advice applications (VAAs) developed for the 2014 European elections: EUvox and euandi. We find that the two VAAs show highly similar results in terms of party positioning on the cultural liberal-conservative and pro-anti EU dimensions, while economic left–right placements converge less, especially concerning right-wing parties. Our analyses reveal that the higher overlap on the cultural and EU dimensions is a result, at least partially, of the inclusion of similar items used to measure these concepts, while most of the systematic divergence between the two VAAs in left–right placements stems from problematic issue-statements used in the dimensional calculations. We demonstrate how certain items can cause bias in the placements of specific party families by (1) not aligning with other statements that measure the same latent construct; (2) tapping into other latent constructs, in addition to the one they are supposed to measure; and (3) not inducing sufficient polarization between parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2014 and 2019 European elections, not only were parliamentary seats at stake, but more importantly, European citizens were given the opportunity to indirectly decide who would captain the ship of the European Commission for the next five years. Ahead of the elections, based on Article 17(7) of the Treaty on European Union, the European political parties nominated their lead candidates (Spitzenkandidaten) for the Commission presidency and ran personalised, presidential-style campaigns across the member states. Although discarded in 2019, the Spitzenkandidat process brought about several political and institutional changes, while aiming to cure the EU's democratic deficiencies. The process was conceived in 2014 as a way to make the selection of the Commission president more transparent and legitimate. At the same time, the level of politicisation was increased, with inter-institutional changes being implemented. The role of the European political parties was strengthened from that of being service providers to being proactive campaigners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the European Parliament is increasingly involved in EU governance, its role in policy developments in domains of strategic importance for the EU has not been the focus of many studies. In this article, we analyse a new digital dataset containing more than 10,000 speeches delivered in the European Parliament plenary between 1999 and 2014 and identify patterns related to temporal increase or decrease in the Parliament's focus on higher education, the topics linked to higher education discussions and patterns concerning the country and party group affiliation of the European Parliament members who speak about higher education. Our findings suggest that the total number of speeches, either specifically dedicated to higher education, or mentioning higher education when addressing other issues, did increase over time and particularly during the adoption of action programmes and related budgetary decision. Furthermore, higher education was less referred to in the Parliament speeches as a stand‐alone issue than in relation to other policy areas in which the EU has strong jurisdiction. Finally, our findings indicate that the variance in whether a Member of the European Parliament speaks about higher education is more closely linked to country of origin than party affiliation, highlighting the persistent national dimension of higher education discussions at the European level. These findings attest to the increasing – yet largely overlooked – role of the European Parliament in higher education policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role that intra-ethnic coordination and kin-state alliances play in shaping how parties that represent national minority groups approach their participation in the European Parliament (EP). This is done through an analysis of the political behaviour—electoral strategy, party group choice and modes of interest assertion in the EP—of ethnic minority parties in five Central and East European countries. The article finds that the role of intra-ethnic coordination and kin-state alliances is limited at the level of EP elections, but significant at the level of party group choice and in the visibility of minority issues in the EP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explains normative and political aspects of the freedom of association exercised by European parties. After an overview of theoretical and historical background, the article opens scientific and normative concepts of political party and political party operating at European level (Europarty), views the Europarties comparatively to political parties of the EU member state Estonia, and to political representation in the European Parliament. The author, who has legal research background, has aimed at politically contextualizing normative developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 European Parliament elections were the first elections where the major political groups each nominated a lead candidate (Spitzenkandidat) for the Commission presidency in the hope that this would increase the visibility of the elections and mobilize more citizens to turn out. Using data from the 2014 European Elections Study, an EU-wide post-election survey, we analyse whether and how the presence of the lead candidates influenced the individual probability to participate in these elections. Our findings show that the recognition of the candidates increased the propensity to turn out, even when controlling for a host of other individual-level factors explaining turnout and the context factors known to facilitate participation. Furthermore, the campaign efforts of the lead candidates are associated with higher turnout levels and are reinforced by candidate recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 European elections demonstrated the scale and success of the EU’s opponents. Radical and populist parties topped the polls in some countries while others gained parliamentary representation for the first time. At the same time, Euroscepticism has entered the mainstream, with an increase of anti-EU rhetoric among government parties and the European Conservative and Reformist group becoming the third largest party in the European Parliament. In this context, this article aims at analysing the strategies developed by Eurosceptics from the left, the right and the mainstream once elected to parliament but also at providing food for thought regarding the implications of an (increased) presence of Eurosceptic MEPs. It provides a typology of four roles played by Eurosceptics, showing the diversity of their strategies. It then argues that the presence of these dissenting voices might be an asset for the EU’s legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The euro crisis is increasingly affecting the political debate in the European Union. Exogenously determined power shifts and institutional changes have been imposed on a number of member states. These measures and the direct intervention of external stakeholders in the key realms of domestic politics pose a serious challenge to both the EU's cohesiveness and its democratic nature. This study looks at how the voting dynamics and the government/opposition-like alignments in the European Parliament are affected by the ongoing crisis. It highlights the balance of partisan and nationally driven factors behind legislators' choices related to the management of the crisis. To capture the impact of the crisis-related debate on the actors' cohesiveness and alignments, two sets of vote-based analyses are conducted. This analysis proves that the main determinant of legislators' alignments in crisis-related debates is membership of the eurozone, while the explanatory potential of factors such as ideology and partisanship appears residual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the European Parliament ( MEPs) represent their citizens in European Union policy making, having the power to approve, amend or reject the near majority of legislation. The media inform EU citizens about their representatives and are able to hold them publicly accountable. However, we know little about whether, and to what extent, MEPs are visible in the news. This study investigates the visibility of MEPs in national broadsheets in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. It seeks to explain individual-level variation by employing an original dataset of news visibility of 302 MEPs over a period of 25 months ( September 2009- September 2011) and tests the applicability of the news values and mirror theories in the context of supranational politics. The results show that political office, length of tenure and domestic party leadership have a positive effect. Legislative activities have a mixed effect on MEP news visibility. Attendance negatively affects news visibility, while non-attached MEPs receive more news coverage. In short, despite the core supranational nature of EP legislative politics, MEP news visibility primarily depends on journalists' domestic considerations. This informs both our understanding of MEP parliamentary behaviour and journalism studies in the context of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 2009 the European Union (EU) adopted a regulation banning the import of seal products into the EU or placing seal products on the EU market. The European Parliament was the main driving force behind the regulation and the EU has been criticised by affected countries outside the EU for not basing this decision on the available expert knowledge. The questions asked are how, given epistemic dependence, non-experts may challenge an expert based policy proposal. Can non-experts hold experts accountable, and if so in what way? Three main tests and ten subtests of expert knowledge are proposed and these tests are then used to assess whether the European Parliament did in fact argue in a way consistent with available expert knowledge in amending the Commission proposal for a regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]