Power without Influence? Explaining the Legislative Impact of the EP after Lisbon

Abstract

Since 2009, the institutional development of the European Union (EU) has been marked by some fundamental tensions. A key one concerns the European Parliament (EP). On the one hand, the Treaty of Lisbon has further empowered the EP, rebranding co-decision as the ordinary legislative procedure and extending the legislative powers of the EU’s only directly elected institution to new policy areas. The transformation of the EP into a legislative powerhouse, and an equal and fully-fledged legislator with the EU Council, was almost complete. On the other hand, the different crises that hit the EU in the same period – the economic and financial crisis, the migration crisis, and eventually Brexit – have, in the eyes of several observers, made the EU more intergovernmental. Arguably, these developments have given rise to a “new intergovernmental” Union, where the supranational institutions play a more limited role. Against this backdrop, this panel asks: to what extent has the EP effectively used the new legislative powers conferred to it by the Treaty of Lisbon? What conditions have favoured or limited its capacity to shape legislation? The panel will address these questions systematically. Theoretically, it will frame specific hypotheses to account for the legislative influence (or lack thereof) of the European Parliament. Empirically, it will observe variation in influence both across policy areas (comparing ‘newer’ codecision areas such as asylum and economic governance with the more established environmental policy) and stages of the legislative process (particularly, agenda-setting and inter-institutional negotiations). The panel will provide new insights and empirical data on the role of the EP in the ordinary legislative procedure and will cast some light on more general developments in the EU political system.

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