BUILDING EUROPE: NATIONAL ISSUES DEBATED IN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PLENARY SESSIONS AND THE LEGITIMISATION OF THE EUROPEAN POLITICAL SPACE

BUILDING EUROPE: NATIONAL ISSUES DEBATED IN

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PLENARY SESSIONS AND

THE LEGITIMISATION OF THE EUROPEAN

POLITICAL SPACE

Miguel Hernandez Littlewood

MA Thesis in European Studies: European Policy Graduate School of Humanities

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Table of Content

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... 3

INTRODUCTION ... 5

1. ADDRESSING GAPS IN THE LITERATURE ... 7

1.1. EPS and Democratic Deficit Literature Limitations ... 7

1.2. Combination of Literatures ... 9

2. PARLIAMENTS IN PUBLIC SPHERES AND DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SYSTEMS ... 10

2.1. Towards an Institutional Definition of Public Sphere ... 10

2.2. Parliaments in Democratic Political Systems ... 13

2.3. Legitimisation Impact of Parliaments and Parliamentarians ... 16

3. SYMBOLIC AND DISCOURSIVE LEGITIMACY OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ... 16

3.1. European Parliament as the European Public Sphere ... 17

3.2. Challenging EU’s Democratic Deficit Claims: MEPs as Guardians of Public Will ... 18

3.3 European Parliament Significance to the European Political Space ... 20

4. EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PLENARY SESSION: A NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR ANALYSIS ... 20

5. METHODOLOGY ... 21

5.1. Data Selection and Use ... 21

5.2. Case Studies and Operationalisation ... 22

5.3. Limitations ... 24

6. CASE STUDY: 2009-2014 PARLIAMENTARY PERIOD ... 25

6.1. Overview Analysis ... 25

6.2. Comparing Individual Cases ... 31

7. CASE STUDY: DUTCH MEPS TALKING ABOUT THE NETHERLANDS ... 48

6.1 Disapproving of the EU ... 48

6.2. Approving of the EU ... 51

8. CASE STUDY: BRITISH MEPS REFERENCING SPAIN ... 54

8.1. Disapproving of the EU ... 55

8.2. Approving of the EU ... 57

9. REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION ... 61

9.1. Reflection: Comparative Analysis ... 61

9.2. Concluding Thoughts: Achievements, Implications, and Further Study ... 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 68

ANNEX ... 77

1. Graphs and Tables ... 77

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3. British MEPS Plenary Interventions Mentioning Spain July 2009-July 2010 ... 94

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 2. Cross-Section Typology of Plenary Interventions Referencing Member States ... 29

Figure 1: Nº of References to Member States in Plenary Debates 2009-2014 ... 26

Figure 2. References to Any Member State by Origin of Speaker 2009-2014 ... 29

Figure 3. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Austria 2009-2014 by Actor ... 33

Figure 4. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Belgium 2009-2014 by Actor ... 33

Figure 5. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Cyprus 2009-2014 by Actor ... 33

Figure 6. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Estonia 2009-2014 by Actor ... 34

Figure 7. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Finland 2009-2014 by Actor ... 35

Figure 8. Plenary Interventions Mentioning France 2009-2014 by Actor ... 35

Figure 9. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Germany 2009-2014 by Actor ... 36

Figure 10. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Greece 2009-2014 by Actor ... 36

Figure 11. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Hungary 2009-2014 by Actor ... 37

Figure 12. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Ireland 2009-2014 by Actor ... 37

Figure 13. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Italy 2009-2014 by Actor ... 38

Figure 14. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Latvia 2009-2014 by Actor ... 38

Figure 15. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Lithuania 2009-2014 by Actor ... 38

Figure 16. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Malta 2009-2014 by Actor ... 39

Figure 17. Plenary Interventions Mentioning The Netherlands 2009-2014 by Actor ... 40

Figure 18. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Poland 2009-2014 by Actor ... 40

Figure 19. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Portugal 2009-2014 by Actor ... 41

Figure 20. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Romania 2009-2014 by Actor ... 41

Figure 21. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Slovakia 2009-2014 by Actor ... 42

Figure 22. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Slovenia 2009-2014 By Actors ... 42

Figure 23. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Spain 2009-2014 by Actors ... 43

Figure 24. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Sweden 2009-2014 by Actors ... 43

Figure 25. Plenary Interventions Mentioning UK 2009-2014 by Actor ... 44

Figure 26. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Bulgaria 2009-2014 by Actor ... 45

Figure 27. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Croatia 2009-2014 by Actor ... 46

Figure 28. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Czech Republic 2009-2014 by Actor ... 46

Figure 29. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Denmark 2009-2014 by Actor ... 47

Figure 30. Plenary Interventions Mentioning Luxembourg 2009-2014 by Actor ... 47

Annex-Graph 1. Population of Most Populated Member States on 1 January 2009-2014 ... 77

Annex-Graph 2. Population of Eastern Enlargement Member States on 1 January 2009-2014 77 Annex-Table 1. Nº Member State Mentions 2009-2014 ... 78

Annex-Table 2. References to Member States by Origin of Speaker 2009-2014... 79

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EPS European Public Sphere ES Spain FI Finland FR France HR Croatia HU Hungary IRL Ireland IT Italy LT Lithuania LU Luxembourg LV Latvia MT Malta NL the Netherlands PL Poland PT Portugal RO Romania SE Sweden SI Slovenia SK Slovakia

4 UK United Kingdom

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INTRODUCTION

Since the start of the decade it is not uncommon to see headlines depicting the EU in a constant crisis state. The Eurozone crisis, the Refugee and Migration crises, and Brexit, to name some recent examples of EU crises, have even shaken the European project to its core raising doubts over its viability into the future. Despite having faced a series of crises since its foundation, these are still perceived as unprecedented times for the Union (Hobolt 2016; Patomäki 2017; Wahl 2017). This undeniably significant set of crises leads to the assumption that the EU’s legitimacy in tackling modern problems is weakened. As Patomäki stated, ‘From this perspective, the legitimation of the EU lies on shaky foundations because of ‘democratic deficit’, lack of identity, and proper citizenship’ (2017:170). This legitimacy crisis is manifested through the portrayal of the EU as fractured with stark divides between Member States and between institutions and its citizenry.

Rising nationalism across the Union is becoming increasingly evident as reflected by recently electoral gains fuelled by these crises. In this fractured Europe, some Member States, whose national prioritising attempts are at direct odds with the EU, are becoming more visibly disillusioned with the European project. As a result, this discontent towards the EU has been translated into nationalist policies aiming to weaken the Union and calls for a return to the nation-sate. (BBC 2018; Patomäki 2017; Wagener 2018). Residing in both left and right wing parties, this reflects how national affiliations have begun to be an important element to take into account in European politics as globalisation continues to expand (Hooghe and Marks 2009).

Additionally, the postfunctionalist perception of the end of the permissive consensus and the rise of a constraining dissensus (Hooghe and Marks 2009) is more evident, more so with the perceived distance between “Brussels” and day-to-day citizens. Referendums on EU issues, contributing to the debate on the EU’s democratic deficit, not only have highlighted stark demographic divides but also differences in views on the EU between national elites and day-to-day citizens (Euronews 2013; Hobolt 2016). This worrisome distance between EU institutions and citizens is developing into a drop in popular confidence in the Union, creating barriers to further integration and establishing a European demos, as stated by Patomäki.

The fact that the proposed new EU constitutional treaty was rejected in the 2005 referendums in France and Netherlands speaks in favour of interpretation B. Throughout the early years of the euro, the EU was constantly under criticism (as it was in the 1990s), despite the fact that the economy appeared to be growing quite briskly in many countries. This makes it understandable why the official objective of the Lisbon negotiations was not only to strengthen the EU’s identity and decision-making, but also to reduce its ‘democratic deficit’. The small steps taken in the Lisbon treaty, however, did not remedy the situation (Patomäki 2017:170).

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Despite all of this, calls for further democratisation of the EU still occur (Patomäki 2017). Considering that many of these aim to reduce the gap between citizens and institutions, it is vital to ask where the European Parliament plays into this: this thesis will do exactly so. By focusing on this institution, it hopes to provide a new perspective into the institution’s role in the legitimisation process of the EU. Taking into account the rise of nationalism and the salience of national issues, the study will answer the following research question: How does the discussion of national issues in the European Parliament legitimise the European political space?

The discussion of national issues in the European Parliament plenary session provides an alternative deliberative platform at the European level, in which debates can be ignited. Awareness on these issues can be increased thus contributing to the transnational flow of political information through the Union. Plenary session then reflect the building of the wider EU picture and demonstrating the existence of a European public sphere. Additionally, this procedure can establish a means through which sentiments of approval or disapproval towards EU institutional and decision-making infrastructure can be introduced. This strengthens the Parliament’s adherence to democratic requirements for a stable political system by introducing discursive mechanisms of control of EU authority and demonstration of popular approval of the EU. Both of these developments have a positive impact on the legitimacy of the European political space as they can be considered as key deliberative elements of a democratic political system.

Throughout the analysis, it is important to highlight the importance of MEPs in this process. Their dual nature as European and national actors, and their dual role as informants and guardian of public will are essential to comprehend how these debates contribute to the legitimacy of the EU. The complexity of their impact on the legitimacy of the European political space can manifest itself through the MEP’s use of discursive tools such as comparisons with other Member States, metaphors and conceptual analogies.

As to demonstrate this, three case studies will be presented all based on the 2009-2014 parliamentary period. A quantitative overview of the period will look at the extent to which national issues are discussed and which actors participate the most in this process to prove the existence of a parliamentarian public sphere. Two in-depth political discourse analysis cases will look into how Dutch MEPs discuss Dutch issues and how British MEPs discuss Spanish issues between 2009 and 2010, to determine the use of national issues to demonstrate their (dis)approval of the EU.

In order to address this question, the thesis will be displayed as follows. Firstly, it will address the gaps in the European Public Sphere (EPS) and the EU Democratic Deficit literatures. This will be followed by a proposal on a combined approach to tackle these. Secondly, the study will present a theoretical framework through a discussion on an

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institutional approach to public spheres adapted to the context of a parliament and the position this institution and parliamentarians occupy in a democratic political system. Thirdly, the insights exposed in the previous section will be applied to the European Parliament case. This will be done to demonstrate the potential for a European public sphere and to reaffirm MEPs popular sovereignty mandate towards all EU citizens. Fourthly, an explanation on the obtainment of the selected plenary interventions will be provided alongside with a presentation of the methodological considerations for the case study analyses. Fifthly, the above-mentioned cases will be presented and carefully analysed. Finally, a reflection combining the theoretical insights and the conclusions reached in the case studies will be made.

1. ADDRESSING GAPS IN THE LITERATURE

Analysing the importance and the activity of the European Parliament as a democratic and representative institution can and has contributed to a number of existing literatures. This can be achieved by raising questions regarding the power the Parliament has and the source of its institutional value. The literatures on the European Public Sphere (EPS) and on the EU’s Democratic Deficit have addressed these topics in their respective way. The former focuses on the communication system that the European Parliament is involved in and contributes to, while the latter looks into the position of the Parliament within the institutional framework of the EU. However, their analysis of the European Parliament has often been undermined by the respective literatures’ thematic barriers. As a result, each ignore or set aside crucial aspect of the European Parliament that could contribute to an understanding of its legitimacy and connection with the European citizenry. Nevertheless, this barrier can be circumvented by combining the insights of both the EPS and Democratic Deficit literatures thus addressing the gaps in both of the literatures altogether. This section will firstly address the literatures’ limitations and then propose a combined approach for this study.

1.1. EPS and Democratic Deficit Literature Limitations

On the one hand exclusively using the EPS literature will lead the research to take on a media communication perspective, understandably as the concept of public sphere was developed through political journalism studies. The literature as it stands favours a focus on media that inevitably drifts away from the institutional setting of the notion of public sphere. For example, De Beus’s definition of public sphere focuses on how citizens often turn to the media, an intermediate sphere beyond that of the state and the market, to ‘learn, discuss, organize collective action, and bargain’ (2010:14-15). Media then becomes a site where citizenship and constitutional democracy practices are developed, signalling its importance to a political system. In Walters’ analysis of public sphere

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models, an emphasis is made on how the media is seen as ‘the most important forum of the public sphere for democracies since mass media provided a vision of the public sphere to a vast number of people’ (2017:751). Diez Medrano’s (2009) approach to public sphere also takes on this focus. He states that public sphere exist when ‘a minimum of free speech allows for political debate through the media’ (2009:91). None of these examples addresses the importance of parliaments as intermediate institutions that contribute to the establishment of public spheres. If the media is seen as an intermediate body between the state and the citizen, a representative and democratically-elected parliament should also be taken into account, despite the ongoing tendency of decreasing voter turnout to parliamentary elections in most democratically consolidated democracies (Kostelka 2017). Consequently, the European Parliament is not that widely studied in the EPS literature. This limitation is further reinforced by the perceived institutional weakness of the European Parliament in comparison with other EU institutions, which potentially weakens the analysis of the European public sphere (Follesdal and Hix 2006).

Moreover, the EPS literature tends to favour a notion of a set of Europeanised national public spheres rather than a unique European counterpart in itself. The ongoing debate on the nature of the European public sphere often focuses on the barriers for its development vis-à-vis the Europeanisation of national spheres. Nitoiu (2013) identified that the lack of sufficient collective will at the European level, linguistic and national barriers and a limited or barely existing European demos did not allow for the European public sphere to be sufficiently institutionalised. Therefore the only existing form the European sphere could take is that of a conglomerate of national public spheres. Koopmans and Statham agreed with this point. In their opinion, the European public sphere is formed by the establishment of similar themes, frames, patterns of interpretation, and ideas expressed in debates in national spheres (Nitoiu 2013), giving the impression of a process of negative integration and liberalisation of national public spheres. This stance assumes that the possibility for a European public sphere to merge will largely depend on the flexibility and willingness of the national public spheres. Yet again the existing European institutions, such as the European Parliament, that contribute to the flow of political communication are often undermined in contrast with the national counterparts.

Furthermore, the EPS literature places too much emphasis on the potential of the European media frameworks as part of the European public sphere. This is done instead of focusing on existing contributions that institutions such as the European Parliament as a platform and the work of MEPs provide towards the process of legitimising the European political space. This again is due to institutional weakness of the European Parliament in comparison with other European institutions.

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On the other hand, the Democratic Deficit literature addressed the topic of the status of the European Parliament usually in comparison with the rest of the European institutions and against the example of national parliaments. For example, Follesdal and Hix (2006), as the main proponent within the literature, explain that the weakness of the institution is one of the causes of the EU’s democratic deficit. Pieter Beetz and Rossi (2017) identify that this is due to the European Parliament and other EU institutions’ inability to reflect EU citizens’ connection with the ideal of popular sovereignty. Alternatively, Tsakatika (2007) explains that EU democratic deficit is caused by the Parliament’s lack of development of party political competition and powerlessness of citizens to remove EU-level representatives from office through elections, resulting from the EU’s lack of demos. All of these claims reflect the author’s underlining comparison of the EU’s institutional structure with that developed at nation-state level, implying that the EU’s institutions should develop towards an ideal form in order to be effective and truly representative.

Herein lies the Democratic Deficit literature’s main limitation. Despite its recognition of the importance of focusing on the institutional setting as the first step towards analysing the EU, its overemphasis on assessing the European Parliament in the light of an ideal form of representative parliament does not allow it to focus on the institution’s current advantageous position and its existing literal and symbolic power. This aspect is often overshadows by the literature’s institutional engineering recommendations for the European Parliament to overcome its competence barriers or to draft a new institutional structure.

1.2. Combination of Literatures

In order to address the symbolic power of the European Parliament and its contributions to the legitimisation process of the EU, several insights from the EPS and Democratic Deficit literatures can be used, having acknowledged their limitations. The EPS literature could benefit from understanding how the Democratic Deficit literature addresses the importance of institutions in the European context (especially the European Parliament) in improving the European political system. In return, the EPS literature can complement the Democratic Deficit literature through the concept of public sphere. Simultaneously, it could add an understanding of the European Parliament’s deliberative and symbolic power, which stems from raising awareness of certain issues and initiating public debates in a European platform. Both of the literatures also provide supplementary conceptions on the nexus between citizens and political apparatus of the EU that contribute to a better understanding of the European Parliament’s legitimacy impact. Therefore, this thesis will explore the definition of representative or liberal public sphere and the European Parliament as part of the European public sphere through its symbolic communicative power. Simultaneously, consideration on the characteristics of a

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political system and role of parliaments in an institutional order will be made to deepen the understanding of institutional legitimacy of the European Parliament.

2. PARLIAMENTS IN PUBLIC SPHERES AND DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SYSTEMS

Having acknowledged the literatures’ gaps and limitations, this section will present a definition of parliaments as institutions of liberal public spheres in their own right. Following this, the theoretical analysis will explore how the approach to public spheres can benefit from a more detailed understanding of legitimacy through a conceptualisation of modern polities as democratic political systems, and the symbolic importance of popular legitimacy in establishing the mandate for parliamentarians. In order to do so, this section will provide an institutional definition of public sphere and its application to the parliament as a debate and exchange of information platform. Taking the previous exercise a step further, the idea of democratic political systems will be adapted to the concept of a parliament as an institution of a liberal public sphere. It will conclude with an understanding of the legitimacy process to which a parliament, parliamentarians and their activity contribute.

2.1. Towards an Institutional Definition of Public Sphere

There are numerous definitions of public spheres, all of which contribute to the richness of the literature on this concept and to the understanding of developments occurring at the European level. However, most rely on a media perspective mentioned in the previous section. Therefore, it is necessary to discard their media-biases to then introduce the institutional dimension when reviewing the existing definitions and building an own understanding of public sphere. As a result this thesis will build on the nature and impact of the phenomenon as presented in the literature while drawing institutional considerations from Habermas’ approach to liberal public sphere. The expected result is an adapted definition of public sphere to the institutional set up of a representative, democratic parliament to be used in the analysis of the European Parliament.

De Beus (2010) defined public sphere as follows:

‘an intermediate sphere of public actions, affiliations and relations beyond the state and the market, where citizens as relatively free and equal members of society and its polity use many, independent and partly rival associations and media to learn, discuss, organize collective action, and bargain, among other things, and where such practices of citizenship tend to protect and promote constitutional democracy under preconditions of maturity (state capacity, civic identity of people, and flexibility of elites)’ (2010:14-15)

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This definition does emphasise on the contextual nature of the concept as it portraits the concept as an intermediate platform. The ways the ideas are communicated in the intermediate space are presented has having an impact on the principles and nature of the political space. However, De Beus prioritises citizens as main actors, leaving institutions aside. Although approaching it as inherently relational, such definition does not cover how a parliament, acting in the name of the citizens, can carry out the same process as a more direct form of public sphere.

When establishing a typology of public sphere models, Walter identifies that the basic characteristics of the concept where those of a ‘communication system that mediates between the citizens at the micro-level and the governmental system at the macro level’ (2017:751). This definition reiterates the relational and interactive nature of a public sphere and again emphasises on communication and mediation as key elements. In contrast with De Beus’ approach, Walter (2017) then expands the rage of actors that are involved in a public sphere by differentiating between governmental actors, such as the government, the legislature, the judiciary and the political administration; intermediary actors such as political parties, who represent collective interests; and citizens of the respective political community. This gives some room to introduce the idea of parliaments as public sphere platforms in themselves including MPs as both intermediate actors, acting as representatives of the government or of citizenry, and citizens in their own right.

Building on this approach, Diez Medrano defined public sphere as follows:

‘a deliberate political space in which both government and civil society participate. It provides political information to the citizens and a channel of communication that citizens can use to influence governments... [It] exists when a minimum of free speech allows for political debate through the media. The geographic scope of this public sphere corresponds to the space covered by political and government institutions, be they municipal, regional, national, European, and so on’ (2009:91)

Diez’s definition goes into more detail about the nature of the communication process of the public sphere. He redirects the focus of public sphere analysis towards the intrinsic connection between exchange of information and the locus of such activity and how it manifest itself though institutions and their outreach. He also indicates that the main actors in a public sphere are governmental and civil actors, following Walter’s definition. Nevertheless, Diez still emphasises that a media system that fosters such information and idea exchange in a political system is the exclusive requirement for a public sphere to develop.

According to these definitions, a parliament as a representative institution would not be considered as a manifestation of public sphere in itself and would only contribute to this development through its dependency on media structures acting as yet another intermediary platform between the state and the private sphere. However, focusing on

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the impact of public spheres can help towards adapting the definition of the concept to highlight the importance of parliaments and identify their own contribution to the development of this intermediate platform. If a public sphere is seen to have an impact on ideas, perception, expectation, and collective ideas and shape public opinion (De Wilde and Trenz 2012), the activity of a representative institution such as a democratic parliament in principle can arguable be similar or even clearer than that of the media. Minutes of plenary sessions can reflect the salience of ideas, and public opinion on political events and can have a direct impact on the formation of policies and the development of public debates. This is strengthened by the direct connection between citizens and MPs, the latter elected with the purpose of carrying out the aforementioned activities.

Moreover, taking this approach to the definition would allow to gain further insights into the connection between public spheres and democratic governance in a parliamentary platform. This reinforces the need for a focus on the nature of public spheres. Such is the definition taken by Fishkin et al., who define public sphere as being inclusive, representative, dialogic, and deliberative, based on active discussions between involved actors. Consequently, this allows for the public to be more knowledgeable and for the chance to consider the context of accountability surrounding the concept of public sphere (Fishkin et al 2014). This lists of characteristics perfectly define parliaments as a public platform to debate and take decisions about relevant issues to the wider citizenry. Drawing on the nature and its impact on the political space, a public sphere can then be considered as a deliberative political space concerning public action, affiliations and relations between citizens/civil society and state/public/ governmental actors, manifesting itself through a platform such as a parliament, whose geographic scope extends to the outreach of the institution. The notion of a parliament as a public sphere rests on its relational, deliberative, informative, and representative nature. This space has an impact on the organisation of collective action and bargaining practices, the promotion of discussion of political action, and the provision of political information to citizens. All of these are considered core pillars of democratic governance.

This understanding of public sphere can be further reinforced by specifically looking into the liberal model of the concept. As Walter (2017) defined it, the liberal public sphere is cultivated through an indirect general public participation, emphasising on the representative role of certain intermediary actors to organising the interest of citizens. A parliament can be assumed to be a manifestation of such public sphere model, especially considering that its representative members ‘transmit the needs of… society to the state, in order, ideally, to transform political into "rational" authority within the medium of this public sphere.’ (Habermas et al 1974:53).

This importance of intermediate actors in liberal public spheres stems from the MPs’ crucial role as the direct link between the wider society and political intuitions. Under

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the principles of freedom of assembly, association, and expression, these key parliamentary actors, also acting as members of the private sphere, ensure the institutionalisation of a public sphere by exercising political control over the governmental actors, as stated by Habermas (1979). That is through the MPs’ ability to reflect public opinion and to conduct the tasks of criticism and control, thus suggesting their relevance to the law-making bodies. Simultaneously they allow for the information and debates taken at the institutions to be accessible to the wider public. Overall the dual role of parliamentarians have a crucial impact on the formation of public opinion, holding affairs or subjects to public reasoning and making political decisions subject to appeal before court or public opinion; and mediation of public demands, while fostering a competition in a mass democracy context, regardless of any additional outside impact from the media.

By aiming to develop an institutional-centred definition of the concept, the focus is shifted to the impact and nature of public spheres. This deliberative platform concerning public action is built on the interaction between state and civil actors and occupying a physical and institutional space consisting of an institutional platform such as a parliament. The basis of the public sphere, manifested in the form of raising awareness of political issues and initiating debates in a platform, rests upon its relational, deliberative, representative nature that reinforces accountability and democratic governance in a political system. This definition can then easily be adapted to an institutional setting such as that of a parliament by taking a liberal model approach. It allows the analysis to take into account the importance of MPs in a parliament as intermediate actors and the indirect organisation of public participation, public action and public interest. Acting as a link between the state and civil society, these actors can take on a dual role as scrutinisers of governmental activity, and as informants of political activity for the wider public. This has a significant impact on parliamentary activity, the formation of public opinion, the mediation of public demands and the fostering of public debate, but more importantly, on the legitimacy of the political order in which the parliament is in.

2.2. Parliaments in Democratic Political Systems

Reviewing the importance and symbolic communicative power of parliaments supports the analysis of these institutions as manifestations of the liberal public sphere. However, additional considerations to strengthen the relevance of this institution should be made as to deepen the understanding of its legitimacy component within a wider political order. In order to do so, an evaluation of basic characteristics of a political system will be done as well as putting forward insightful considerations on legitimacy and the political order, adapting these to parliaments as key representative institutions. This will reflect how the literature on Democratic Deficit presents the ideal of legitimacy and political order, to which the EU is compared. The aim of this section is to highlight the

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use of legitimacy standards that this literature uses and how this can help towards an understanding of legitimacy in the context of an institution such as a parliament. Furthermore it will explore how a parliament’s inherent legitimacy contributes to that of a wider political system.

In order to achieve this, it is vital to follow the subsequent steps. Firstly, the shift to political system has to be addressed to present it as a framework to comprehend modern polities, more so in the case of the EU. Secondly, the characteristics of a political system have to be adapted to parliaments as liberal public spheres to understand the role of parliamentarians in addressing new demands of constituents. Thirdly, a close evaluation has to be made on popular sovereignty and its role in connecting parliamentarians and constituents, symbolically limiting the mandate of representatives.

In the wake of rising political orders that challenge the distinctions between that of international organisations and that of states, a necessary framework of analysis was needed to address new and complex set of political interinstitutional set of interactions. Almonds and Easton had intended to set up a framework applicable to all possible political settings using criterial of political relevance (Thompson 1968). As a result, they proposed that a political system consisted of the following characteristics:

- A set of stable and clearly defined, collective decision-making institutions and a set of rules establishing the appropriate relations between and within these.

- The ability for citizens to realise their political desires either directly or through intermediate actors.

- Impact of collective decisions in the political system on distribution of economic resources and allocation of values across the system.

- Continuous interactions between political outputs and new demands on the system. This new approach was very useful as it could be a way to analyse the EU without having to classify it as an international organisation or as a federal state but rather as a political system in itself. In an attempt to combine this set of criteria with a certain democratic standard, Follesdal and Nix (2006) built on Almond and Easton’s approach by stating that the main features of a democratic system were the following:

- Institutionally established procedures that regulate - Completion for control over political authority - On the basis of deliberation

- Nearly all adult citizens are permitted to participate

- Electoral mechanism where expressed preferences over alternative candidates determine the outcome

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Considering it as a liberal public spheres and a form of democratic system in itself, democratic and representative parliaments fit into the criteria mentioned above. Parliamentarians, as intermediary actors and by virtue of their mandate as representatives of wider society, take on the task of addressing citizens’ new demands on the political order. In doing so, parliamentarians exert control over political authority by defending the will of the majority they represent and interact with political outputs by intervening in policy debates and informing their representatives of the decisions made. However, the extent to which this is achieved largely depends on the existence of parliamentary governance rules that allow for this to occur and the specification of the role of the parliament is within a wider political system.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Deficit literature does not develop around the different uses of democracy criteria as benchmarks to analyse the EU. The literature is equally concerned with legitimacy concerns relevant to the grounding of political systems and to the functioning of parliaments. Many of these are related to the concept of popular sovereignty. Pierte Beetz and Rossi defined its logic as that of the people being ‘the source of all political authority in the polity; therefore, the right to rule derives from the subjects as part of a collective.’ (2017:27). Despite the existence of diverse multitudes and manifestations of legitimate rule, democratic, representative institutions such as parliaments can foster a ‘bond of collectivity’ by both committing to protect citizens’ basic rights and wider societal values, and by providing a normative basis against ideological distortions (Pieter Beetz and Rossi 2017). Yet again democratic accountability and the legitimacy basis of a parliaments can be traced again to the intermediary state of parliamentarians.

Furthermore, popular sovereignty can impact parliamentary activity by determining present and future acceptable outcomes and by ensuring political outcomes are up to citizens’ long term commitments (Pieter Beetz and Rossi 2017). This democratic accountability check on state institutions is key for the respect of electoral outcomes and citizens’ preferences and contributes to the saliency of political issues. Parliamentarian have then no choice but to follow the rules bestowed upon them by the people in order for the institution they belong to achieve a legitimate stability.

Taking the democratic system approach allows the analysis to identify the importance of parliaments in the wider political order. This is due to the fact that stable and structured parliaments can realise the political preferences of citizens through the action of parliamentarians as intermediate actors. Popular legitimacy is at the heart of this notion as it determined the nexus nature of MPS. This point raises the importance of intermediate actors and the stability of institutional framework. A clear connection between MPs and citizens is crucial to ensure the democratic process and the legitimacy of the system to act in the name of society. Through the commitment to protect basic rights for the representatives and to build a normative basis for the standards of political issue interpretation, acting as legitimacy requirements, these intermediate actors can

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ensure the parliament and the wider political system’s stability. Parliamentarians can then contribute to the salience of political issues in accordance to long term commitments of citizens, inevitable impacting the ability to make decisions. This allows for parliament to be a platform where debates can be initiated, impact decision-making, and the popular opinion.

2.3. Legitimisation Impact of Parliaments and Parliamentarians

By focusing on the institutional-centred liberal public sphere definition and the democratic criteria of political system, parliaments can be seen as both democratic and legitimate, regardless of its power and formal competences within a political order. This is due to the nexus it provides between state and citizen through intermediate actors. Parliamentarians act as guardians of public will and as informants of political activity and can impact the formation of public opinion, mediation of public demands and the extent to which political debate on certain issues occurs. However, they are bound by popular sovereignty standards that ensure the stability of the parliament by virtue of their connection with the citizenry. With this in mind, parliamentarians as guardians of public will can give consent or approve of action taken in the political space they participate in. Therefore parliament by its own nature can be considered a platform for debate on issues that relevant to popular will and occur in a political space that has the potential to symbolically and deliberatively contribute to the legitimisation process. The legitimisation of the political space that occurs in a parliaments is twofold: raising awareness and initiating debates on political issues, which requires MPs to be citizens’ representatives; and (dis)approving of or reacting to policymaking infrastructures, which rests upon the role of MPs as guardians of the will of citizens.

3. SYMBOLIC AND DISCOURSIVE LEGITIMACY OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

This following section will build on the institution-based definition of liberal public sphere and the relevance of parliaments’ legitimacy to wider political orders by adapting these statements to the context of European Parliament within the wider EU political space. First and foremost, this analysis will reaffirm the existence of a European public sphere by virtue of the existence of the European Parliament, rather than discussing the existence of EU-wide media structures. Secondly, the democratic deficit of the EU political order will be reconsidered by introducing the nexus argument of parliamentarians to the analysis of the European Parliament and legitimacy impact.

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3.1. European Parliament as the European Public Sphere

The emergence of the European Public Sphere is often considered by the literature as the first step of the democratisation process of the EU as it is often linked to the idea facilitating communication between Union’s people. In the path to increase its authority and legitimacy, the EU often attempts to build transnational and European platforms that consequently increase the chance for intervention of citizens in the European project (Nitoiu 2013). With the advancing of European integration, a need for a communicative system either at the European level or by merging national public spheres is becoming more evident. However, the literature often struggles to identify whether this occurs at a European level or through the Member State context.

Despite Union’s weak but growing need to be present in national media contexts (Nitoiu 2013; Bijmans and Altides 2007), the EU is at an advantageous position in terms of developing its own public sphere. A clear and stable set of institutions are set at the European level and links with existing national frameworks have been established. The European Parliament can be considered as one of the key institutions that supports this statement.

The Treaty of the European Union (TEU) determines the connection between the Parliament and the Union’s citizens through directly elected representatives. They are elected for a five-year term by ‘direct universal suffrage in a free and secret ballot’ (art 14.3 TEU). Once elected, MEPs have the duty to contribute to the formation of European political awareness and to express the will of the citizens they represent (art 10.4 TEU). Additionally, as in the case of the rest of the EU institutions, decisions made by MEPs in the Parliament have to be taken ‘as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen’ (art 10.3 TEU) and have to be publicly available as to allow citizens and representative organisations the opportunity to intervene in the process when possible and to voice their views in all areas of EU activity (art 11.1 TEU). It is evidently clear that the European Parliament’s democratic mandate is closely linked to that of representing the citizens and increasing access to information regarding decision-making.

Considering this legal basis, Nitoiu stated that ‘the European Union has the potential of offering and promoting different institutional fora and fluxes of communications where groups that are usually marginalised within the nation state can voice their interests and concerns.’ (2013:28). His statement contributes to the idea that the European Parliament must be regarded as an institution of value to the European public sphere. Regardless of existing barriers that can potentially weaken the Parliament’s role as a platform for publicly-accessible political debates, such as a lack of sufficient collective will, and linguistic and national barriers, limited competences (Nitoiu 2013; Walter 2017), the European Parliament still contributes to the accountability and legitimacy of EU governance. This is by virtue of representing the will of all EU citizens and creating new channels of communication. As pointed out by Nitoiu,

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The resulting transnational communication ‘gives way to the production of discourses and meanings which evade the constraints imposed by centres of power located within nation states. Through this it promotes several mechanisms that drive forward democratisation… Forms of transnational communication within Europe provide avenues where different national or regional actors can meet and become entangled in democratic processes of contestation or consensus formation’ (Nitoiu 2013:29).

Moreover, the European Parliament can be both considered as an additional platform where national issues can be discussed and as a European platform in its own where European debates are carried out, thus increasing EU citizens’ knowledge on these issues. This is due to the fact that MEPs can present themselves as both European actors, representing all EU citizens and interacting in the European platform, and national actors, through their links to national parties and national constituencies. It is through them that the link between national and European debates and communication systems is strengthened, a development further supported by their significant visibility in the structure as opposed to the poor representation of EU citizens in the media (Walter 2017).

Irrespective of whether the emerging communicative power of the European parliament furthers the clash between the European and national public spheres or not (Statham and Trenz 2015), the focus should be placed on the European Parliament as crossover platform between both. The European Parliament is the liberal institutional manifestation of the European public sphere. It symbolic relevance is built upon the interaction between the MEPs as dual nature intermediate actors of Union citizens, supported by the transnational type of communication between them.

3.2. Challenging EU’s Democratic Deficit Claims: MEPs as Guardians of Public Will

In their analysis of the EU, Hix and Høyland (2011) identified that the Union did meet the characteristics of a political system. The EU enjoys a significant institutional stability ensured by the constitutional equilibrium of the Treaties determining its basic institutional architecture and its coherent institutional logic. Political demands in the EU arise from a complex public and private network generating a competition over influence in EU policy making. As a result, multiple channels exist where EU decision-making is carried out (Hix and Høyland 2011). This is particularly relevant as EU action extends over a wide range of areas and produces pieces of legislation that directly and indirectly affect the national political system. However, Hix and Høyland (2011) and Follesdal and Hix (2006), as many other contributors to the democratic deficit literature, challenge the idea that the EU is fully democratic.

The arguments that are put forward to identify the EU’s democratic deficit are mostly centred at the weakness of the institutional setting, the distance between ‘Brussels’ and the day-to-day citizen, and the limited intervention of EU citizens in the system (Hix and

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Høyland 2011; Follesdal and Hix 2006; Tsakatika 2007). In these, the Parliament is often portrayed as a weak institution, being unable to scrutinise the Commission, the Council or national governments (Follesdal and Hix 2006). This is further aggravated by the declining voter turnout in European elections and the recurring use of these as national rather than on European issues. The resulting democratic deficit is built on the consequent policy drift away from EU citizens’ preferences (Follesdal and Hix 2006; Tsakatika 2007).

However, closer attention given to the function of MEPs can help the analysis of the European Parliament shift away from the literature’s understanding of the Union’s democratic deficit. Euro-parliamentarians carry out their role of informants and public will guardians as determined by the Treaties and contribute to the political debates both at European and national level. This mandate-, treaty-based, discursive approach to the role of MEPs challenges the section of the literature that emphasis a structural, electoral approach to the role of Euro-parliamentarians. The later limits the reach and representativeness of MEPs to only certain interests as shown in the following examples. Coultrap (1999) argued that the lack of salience of European issues and the reduced decisive nature of European elections impacts how social preferences are expressed in the mechanism of the European Parliament. As party labels are of superficial nature established to gather the like-minded in these elections, he defends the idea that MEPs are more likely to represent the interest of local party organisations or specific interest groups. In their study of voting behaviour in the European Parliament, Hix et al. (2006) limit the symbolic understanding of the role of MEPs to that defending national party and Member State interests. They argue that it is due to the MEPs connections to national parties and the how the Parliaments electoral districts do not transcend national borders. While the electoral approach is justifiable, the nature of this analysis requires an understanding of MEPs’ mandate that is based on the Treaties and on the role of MEPs in parliamentary debates as to avoid limiting a comprehension of the symbolic power of the Parliament. Taking into account the mandate resulting from the treaty-based obligation of MEPs to all citizens, these representative intermediate actors have to find a way to balance their obligations to all and address all constituents’ priorities. As a result, this perception questions the idea that the European public sphere is not as institutionalised as national public spheres or that it is fragmented and focused on a finite list of issues, as often mentioned in the literature (Nitoiu 2013). In line with the institutional definition of public spheres, considering MEPs as guardians of the will of the citizens allows the analysis to evaluate the ways in which the interaction of MEPs and EU institutional framework impact the European political space.

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3.3 European Parliament Significance to the European Political Space

Taking into account the definition of the liberal public sphere and the characteristics of democratic systems in the context of parliaments, a different picture of the European Parliament can be presented. This representative institution acts as an intermediate structure through which citizens can participate in political deliberation through MEPs. Acting as the nexus, these representative actors have the opportunity to initiate a debate on national issues at European level. By raising awareness and establishing a discussion on these issues, MEPs are indirectly contributing to the transnational flow of information within the EU, the basis for the European public sphere, and carrying out an essential element of democratic governance. Therefore, the use of the European Parliament as a European debate platform legitimises the European political space by reinforcing the Parliament’s symbolic discursive power.

As guardians of all EU citizens, MEPs can further contribute to the symbolic legitimisation of the European political order by approving or disapproving of EU policymaking structures to deal with the policy issues that are discussed at the European Parliament. With the responsibility to commit to the mandate to all EU citizens and popular legitimacy, this act gives the seal of approval of European citizens towards the European political space, yet another requirement for the functioning of a democratic order.

4. EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PLENARY SESSION: A NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR

ANALYSIS

A shift in the analysis to the representative institutional component of the public sphere would provide a chance to evaluate the symbolic step that MEPs carry out when discussing national issues in European Parliament plenary sessions. In contrast with the media focus the EPS literature usually takes, this new approach would also allow the analysis of the European Parliament to address the Europeanisation of national public spheres versus European public sphere debate and acknowledge the current contribution of the Parliament towards the legitimacy of the EU. This can reinforce the notion embedded in the concept of public sphere of intermediate and representative channels where political communication can flourish beyond that of the media. Additionally, taking the Democratic Deficit literature’s emphasis on the analysis of institutional structures to determine the status of a political system could only strengthen the aforementioned approach to the study of the European Parliament. This is due to the fact that it could complement the institutional component of the public sphere by introducing deliberations on the legitimacy value of parliament activity and developing an understanding of the connection between the institution and citizenry.

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European Parliament plenary sessions could be an adequate start to apply this combined approach. As intermediate actors between the EU institutions and EU citizens during debates in plenary, MEPs are a manifestation of the institutional element of the communication and mediation of the European public sphere. Debates between MEPs can encourage a political discussion that feeds into the process of public opinion formation and contribute towards the legitimisation of the European political process by transforming national issues to transnational issues, simply by virtue of MEPs being representatives of EU citizens debating the issues in a transnational European space. Moreover, considering that the EU currently lacks available mechanism to ignite EU-wide debates and democratic contestation procedures, and is less capable of addressing central issues on European integration, discussion of national issues at EP plenary sessions could be a (temporary) solution considering that deliberation fosters preference formation, increasing salience of certain issues. This process impacts the EU political process by addressing EU’s distance from EU citizens, and increasing EU’s commitment to popular sovereignty.

5. METHODOLOGY

As this thesis will look into the connection between the discussion of national issues in the European Parliament and the legitimation of the European political space, it is deemed appropriate to analyse the construction of arguments when referring to Member States by MEP’s in plenary sessions. The purpose of this chapter is to layout the methodology of the thesis. Firstly, an indication will be made on how the relevant information regarding the 2009-2014 European Parliament plenary sessions is accessed. Secondly, the three different case studies will be presented alongside with declarations on how the quantitative and qualitative analysis will be carried out in each of them.

5.1. Data Selection and Use

The idea that the structure of the debates in the European Parliament plenary has an impact on the way MEPs build their argumentation in their interventions is very prominent in the European Parliament linguistic analysis literature. Although there are no institutional constraints, Garssen (2016, 2017) identified that the preference of argumentation resulted from the structure of the debates. The fixed place of debate and speaking order, and the little available room for interruption can give a lot of momentum and power to the intervening MEP. Nevertheless, MEPs have to still respect the topic of discussion and therefore it is common for them to adopt a “for” or “against” stance on legislative proposals, depending on the initial position of the rapporteur (Garssen 2017). Therefore MEP interventions to be analysed will be influenced by the topic and other policy matters, setting the general context of their contribution to the parliamentary

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debate. It is reasonable to expect that the MEP will then attempt to link the national issue to the debate on the EU proposed legislation.

Considering the above, the thesis will be focusing on three key elements taken from the selected data. These are the MEP’s member state origin, the debate topic and related policy field of the plenary session which the intervention takes place, and finally the political discourse context in which the reference to the member state is made. With these three elements in mind, the analysis will then then be able to evaluate the legitimation patterns and considerations and the public sphere implications of such interventions.

From the available data, the thesis will be focusing on the 2009-2014 European Parliament for the analysis to cover an entire parliamentary term closest to present times. The significance of this period also relies on the enhanced institutional position of the European Parliament following the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty. Its co-legislator role was strengthened by the extension of the ordinary legislative procedure now applicable to almost all EU legislation, the acquisition of the right to initiate Treaty revision, the obligation for parliamentary consent on the EU’s budget and the election of the President of the Commission (Corbett 2009, Nissen 2014). Due to these reasons, the analysis on the political impact of MEP’s referencing Member States in this parliamentary term could contribute to the understanding of symbolic legitimisation processes of the European institution landscape, its political space and ultimately the grounding of a European public sphere.

As a starting point, MEP interventions will be filtered by Member State referenced with the help of the PoliticalMashup’s parliament debate search tool. This search engine, developed for a project intended to ‘show the rich possibilities for exploratory search in these highly structured documents’ (Marx et al 2018), offers a heightened access to parliamentary documents not only of the EU, but also other countries. For the benefit of this thesis, the search engine categorises the necessary information of the interventions for the analysis into date, speaker, and content. The thesis will complete this data set with information regarding the MEP’s Member State of origin, enriching PoliticalMashup’s work. With the help of the European Parliament (2018) plenary website, the complete interventions can be accessed and contextualised by the topic of the debate in which it takes part in.

5.2. Case Studies and Operationalisation

Taking into account the selection of data, three case studies will be carried out in this analysis: a quantitative analysis of the overview of the 2009-2014 term, and two political discourse analyses of interventions between July 2009 and July 2010.

23 - 2009-2014 Overview Case Study:

This case study will allow the analysis to look at the entirety of the term. Acknowledging the time constraint and the structural expectations of the analysis, it will take a more quantitative approach by only registering the amount of times a Member State is referenced by MEPs from across the EU. It will aim to identify the extent to which Member State issues are references and other interesting patters that support the idea of the European public sphere. In order to carry out this analysis, the selected data will be organised in tables that indicate how many times and by whom a Member State is referenced between 2009 and 2014. These will be both presented in a single set and per case simultaneously. Additionally, graphical representations for both of these approaches will be provided to help with the visualisation of the results.

- Political Discourse Analysis Case Studies:

These two case studies pick up where the former stops by looking more specifically into the construction of arguments surrounding the referencing of Member State issues, more specifically Dutch MEPs mentioning the Netherlands and British MEPs mentioning Spain between July 2009 and July 2010. The former will allow for an understanding of how MEPs present a national issue from their own Member State and the latter will address how MEPs of a different Member State of origin introduce the issue in the debate. Even though the analysis of the references to all 28 Member States by MEPs from all Member States would produce more solid arguments, it has been deemed appropriate to restrict it to the two abovementioned cases due to the time and structure limitations. The Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom, both as Member State referenced and of place of origin of MEPs, have randomly been selected, taking into account the writer’s origin and place of study.

Unlike the other more quantitative case study, these will be relying on insights from the Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) literature as analytical tools. According to Fairclough and Fairclough, these allow the analyst to focus on the political content of political discourses in order to reveal the political elements in them (Hay 2013¸ Finlayson 2013). An understanding of the link between practical deliberation and decision-making, lead towards a perception of political discourse as ‘involving more specifically practical argumentation, argumentation for or against particular ways of acting, argumentation that can ground decision.’ (Fairclough and Fairclough 2013:1).

As the thesis looks at the legitimisation process and institutionally symbolic impact of discourse in the context of the European Parliament, PDA as a tool can simply be limited to the analysis of the political rather than including a linguistic study of the MEP plenary debates. Therefore, the thesis will not be looking into Fairclough and Fairclough’s limitations no participate in the debate on where to draw the line on what is or is not political. The analysis is focusing on a very clearly political space that is a parliament with

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clear conditions that delimit the mandate of MEPs, as explained in the previous chapter. Moreover, this exercise is not meant to contribute to methodological considerations or to develop a new framework to conduct such analysis, despite using some insights from the political and critical discourse analysis literature.

Building on developments in Critical Discourse Analysis, PDA research methods intend to ‘decode power, dominance, ideology, hegemony in the text and talk of political bodies or politicians’ (Wang 2016:2767). For the purpose of this analysis, language in MEP interventions will be taken as action or rhetoric used for persuasion or manipulation purposes. By breaking down the texts to their political elements, the identification of claims, goals, values and circumstances and the evaluation of the arguments will be made easier. Following Fairclough and Fairclough’s (2012) indications, links will be made between these elements and legitimacy, based on a notion of institutional reality being built by legitimation resources such as rights, obligations, duties, commitments, permissions, authorisations and prohibitions. A consideration of the use of metaphors and analogies as a way of persuasion will also enrichen the analysis of MEP intervention in plenary debates (Wang 2016). By no means will this thesis carry out an evaluation of the debate standards in the European Parliament nor question the MEP intervention’s validity or reasonability. Nevertheless, certain normative patter might be identified in order to assess whether the MEP interventions impact the legislative and informative power of the EP.

Considering the above, the analysis of the MEP interventions in the debates when referencing certain Member States will follow a set of questions that will allow for their categorisation into either exercises of legitimisation or of de-legitimisation of the European political space. These will be the following questions:

- How is the MEP using or presenting the Member State?

- Are they making a comparison with other Member States in the intervention? - With the reference to the Member State are they approving or disapproving of EU

policymaking infrastructure or legitimacy to solve the relevant policy issue? - What discursive tools is the MEP using to strengthen their argument?

This approach will allow for a more uniform and consistent analysis of the plenary debate interventions. This way it will be easier to identify similarities and differences between them in their respective categories and, more importantly, draw conclusions on the impact on the legitimisation and public sphere effect.

5.3. Limitations

There are a series of limitation to this research that have to be acknowledged. As previously mentioned, the most significant limitations were those of time and space. Due to these, the qualitative analysis was unable to be extended and cover an analysis

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of the interventions of all MEPs discussing all the Member States’ national issues in plenary session between 2009 and 2014. Consequently, the overview that will be given in the first cases study cannot include information regarding the context in which the interventions mentioning a Member State is made.

Additionally, the search for material for the analysis has been limited to whether the interventions specifically refer to the official name of the Member State as an indicator of a discussion on national issues. References to nationalities or other elements that could have widened the scope of interventions selected have not been included due to similar time constraints. Following this, the search for interventions referencing the United Kingdom have been limited to those only mentioning “UK” rather than the full name. This was due to the fact that PoliticalMashup’s parliamentary search engine included interventions containing the words “United” and “Kingdom” separately, making it harder to distinguish whether the selected results were referring to the Member State in question. Considering this, the selection of data might have unintentionally disregarded a number of interventions to Member States that would have increased the precision of the analysis.

Last but not least, this analysis will not be considering the impact that the number of MEPs each Member State has could have on the extent to which MEPs from specific Member States intervene in this process. The analysis will therefore not be making a correlation between these two elements, despite its obvious impact on the selected data.

6. CASE STUDY: 2009-2014 PARLIAMENTARY PERIOD

As mentioned in the previous section, this first case study will evaluate trends in the entirety of the 2009-2014 European Parliament plenary session with regard to references to Member States in interventions. In order to do so, a series of graphs and tables will be presented resulting from the search of all of the Member State references in the parliamentarian search engine PoliticalMashup. The case study will develop as follows. Firstly, an overview analysis will be made taking into consideration the amount that each Member State is discussed by MEPs. Subsequently, this will review how representatives from all backgrounds as well the extent MEPs from different origins discuss national issues in their interventions. Secondly, a comparative analysis between the 28 referenced individual Member States cases will be made by looking into each of the graphs.

6.1. Overview Analysis

As clearly shown in Graph 1, referencing Member States in European Parliament plenary debates between 2009 and 2014 was a common discursive instrument used by MEPs

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and other representatives who took part in the discussions. In this legislative session, there were 29,182 instances where either national issues or Member States were discusses in debates covering a wide variety of policy areas (Annex Table 1). Nevertheless, not all Member States are brought up to the same extent in debates within this period. The graph indicates a significant difference between the most mentioned Member States (the Czech Republic, Greece, France, Ireland and Romania) and the least discussed Member States (Slovenia, Estonia, Finland, Luxembourg, and Malta). This difference could be due to a possible national contextual influence and the relevant salience of said national issues at national and European levels, amongst other factors. Yet it is still of interest to see to what extent each of the Member States is discussed.

Figure 1: Nº of References to Member States in Plenary Debates 2009-2014

(Source: Annex Table 1)

At first glance, it is easy to identify similar level of this procedure between Member States. Respectively, the Czech Republic and Greece; Romania and Portugal; Italy, Germany, the UK and Spain; Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria; Lithuania and Austria; and Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium, are brought up in debates to similar extents. These apparent coincidences seem to be random occurrences. However, a better insight into the symbolic contribution of these actions can be seen by observing which Member States are being discussed above the mean.

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 CZ EL FR IRL RO PT IT DE UK ES PL HU BG NL HR CY LT AT DK SE BE SK LV MT LU FI EE SI N º O F P LE N A R Y I N T E R V E N T IO N S