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For policies to be legitimate, both the policy process and the underlying reasons must be transparent to the public. In the EU, the lion’s share of legislation is nowadays negotiated in informal secluded meeting called trilogues. Therefore, presentation of the trilogues compromise by the rapporteur to the European Parliament (EP) plenary is, arguab...
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... categories cover the three dimensions necessary for citizens and MEPs to evaluate the results of the negotiators: Firstly, the positions of the actors and what happened in the compromise, but also practical information on the conduct of the negotiations, so that the EP can assess whether other results could have been achieved. All the categories are presented in detail, including examples in Table 2. On this basis, the process transparency score of each speech is the sum of the categories that compose it: one point for each category. ...Similar publications
The article poses the following research questions: to what extent has the populist executive in Hungary affected formal and informal parliamentary powers? To what extent has the relation between the executive and the legislative changed over the three legislative periods of populist government? This article examines change in formal powers but als...
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... Although MEPs do not prioritise the topics that most concern the public, MEPs talk a great deal about environmental and migration issues (Pennetreau and Laloux 2021). This might mean that MEPs are reactive to public opinion and societal concerns, at least in migration policy (Pennetreau and Laloux 2021). ...
... Although MEPs do not prioritise the topics that most concern the public, MEPs talk a great deal about environmental and migration issues (Pennetreau and Laloux 2021). This might mean that MEPs are reactive to public opinion and societal concerns, at least in migration policy (Pennetreau and Laloux 2021). However, other studies indicate that MEPs do not respond to the call of the public on irregular migration issues. ...
The European Parliament (EP) has been characterised as a 'working parliament without a public' rather than as a 'debating parliament'. However, this distinction was called into question when irregular migration became a sensitive topic and national political parties became polarised on this policy. Thus, this article explores whether one risk resulting from such a characterisation-a lack of public involvement-is raised by EU members in plenary debates on irregular migration issues. In particular, the analysis focuses on the purpose of EU plenaries and investigates the audience for speech acts in EP debates on irregular migration issues. The qualitative, manual content analysis of three debates shows that MEPs address their speeches to multiple audiences, including other MEPs, political groups and members of the Commission and Council, excluding national parties and voters. Speech acts aimed at EU officials, together with problem-solving argumentation, support the characterisa-tion of the EP as a 'working parliament without a public'. It contributes to maintaining the EU communication gap. In contrast, speakers legitimate their speeches by claiming to represent the common people, to be the vox populi. The article concludes by challenging the role of plenary debates in an age of rising Euroscepticism and populism.
... Having this in mind, the EU judges have stated that the work of the trilogues shall also be available for access insofar as it constitutes a decisive stage in the legislative process (European General Court, 2018). Nonetheless, some argue that transparency over how negotiations are conducted is still deficient due to the limited amount of information being provided (Pennetreau & Laloux, 2021). ...
... Sooner or later, the debate on EU transparency almost invariably stumbles on the trilogues as informal meetings where most inter-institutional negotiations are still secretly concluded nowadays, remote from any oversight, except feedback from the negotiators themselves. The third article by Pennetreau and Laloux (2021) addresses this issue empirically by considering the extent to which European Parliament (EP) rapporteurs are being (un)transparent in their speeches when reporting to the assembly's plenary on the legislative compromise they reach through trilogues negotiations. Their investigation is thus a perfect example of looking at transparency in the process. ...
Over the last decades, transparency has featured prominently among the European Union's (EU) efforts to democratize and legitimize its governance. This shift toward transparency has taken many forms and, as the contributions to this thematic issue show, these different forms have evolved significantly over time. Yet, initiatives to enhance transparency have often been blamed for limiting the efficiency of the decision-making process or leading to suboptimal policy outcomes. Consequently, the debate has shifted to whether transparency would be excessive in that it would undermine the EU's capacity to deliver through political arrangements. This editorial presents this transparency-efficiency dilemma, which the different contributions to this thematic issue analyse further.
... Having this in mind, the EU judges have stated that the work of the trilogues shall also be available for access insofar as it constitutes a decisive stage in the legislative process (European General Court, 2018). Nonetheless, some argue that transparency over how negotiations are conducted is still deficient due to the limited amount of information being provided (Pennetreau & Laloux, 2021). ...
This study offers a novelty specifying climate change as the legislation results in the European Parliament (EP) as an indicator of the consistency of political groups in realising their Euromanifestos. The article aims to investigate precisely the prospects and future of climate change policies in the EU post the 2019 general election. This study adopted qualitative legal research methods by studying the Euromanifestos of political groups in the European Union that competed in the 2019 European elections. Environmental issues, particularly climate change, were a significant focus in the study of these manifestos. Based on data from Euromanifesto, this study selected five EU Regulations as indicators of realising such political promises. In addition, the record of legislation and the results of voting during the establishment of the regulation was also applied as a data source in this study. In general, the cohesion between political groups in the EP is excellent. Based on a manifesto study, there are three essential findings; namely, most political groups in the EP make environmental issues, especially climate change, a politicised issue in elections. The second finding is that there are specific intersections between political groups, so it has implications for making the issue of climate change a common interest, and the results of the vote showed that a majority of Member of European Parliament members supported the establishment of the regulation. Finally, the solidarity of the EP political group cohesion in establishing regulations related to climate change is the last finding in this research.
Research into parliamentary speech making–behaviour of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) usually takes a static perspective. We offer an interactive and dynamic approach that understands parliamentary debates as a relational network phenomenon and investigates MEPs’ debate interactions. This allows us to uncover dynamics of inclusiveness and pluralism, self-reinforcing power relationships and transnational policy alliances. Analyzing 11,408 debate interactions between MEPs using a combination of text and dynamic network analysis, we find that male, senior and influential parliamentarians from powerful member states receive more attention with evidence for a self-reinforcing effect over time. Interestingly, seniority matters more for debate attention than leadership positions. Sharing the same nationality and a similar political leaning also shape debate coalitions with the former being more important than the latter.
