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European Parliament: Is the grand coalition really a thing of the past? Bruges Political Research Papers 75/2019

Marié, Awenig (2019) European Parliament: Is the grand coalition really a thing of the past? Bruges Political Research Papers 75/2019. [Policy Paper]

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    Abstract

    While the European Parliament’s two largest political groups, the European People’s Party and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, have been used to sharing its presidency, they decided to fight with each other in January 2017 during the mid-term election. The S&D, indeed, decided to break the coalition agreement they had signed with the EPP after the 2014 European elections. Media and commentators talked about the end of the grand coalition and predicted a new era of decision-making, more political and conflictual. This study aims at analysing the evolution of coalition formation since the end of the 2014 coalition agreement. It uses both quantitative data (roll-call votes in plenary between 2014 and December 2017) and qualitative data (interviews). The grand coalition has remained determining for adopting legislation and non-legislation but has been activated less often when it comes to non-legislative amendments. Moreover, we found that the end of the agreement mostly impacted policy areas that were already conflictual in the past. We assume that coalition formation in the European Parliament is affected by institutional, interinstitutional and conjectural constraints, regardless of the deal signed between the three centrist political groups. In other words, the coalition agreement has only been a reference framework that justified cooperation practises already existing before the 2014.

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    Item Type: Policy Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > EU institutions & developments > European Parliament
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > political parties
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > College of Europe (Brugge) > Bruges Political Research Papers
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 17 May 2019 19:11
    Number of Pages: 40
    Last Modified: 11 Jun 2019 16:47
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/97364

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