How European Commissioners use Speeches to take Political Positions

The academic perspective on the European Commission is changing. Traditionally, the Commission was conceptualized as a unitary actor abiding to member states’ demands. More recent contributions discuss the importance of the individual Commissioner and others call for the Commission to be considered a political – rather than a technocratic – institution. In this paper, we aim at combining both streams by looking at how individual Commissioners position themselves politically. To do so, we analyze speeches delivered by Commissioners. An important part of a Commissioner’s job is to garner support for legislative initiatives. One way to do so, is to hold speeches for different audiences explaining the necessity of the proposed legislation. Commissioners could also use speeches to convey their own political positions as well as to highlight their individual contribution. It is assumed that speech-making by Commissioners is less constrained than other activities, and therefore offers the Commissioners some leeway to express their opinions and political positions more freely. We will look at the ‘role’ Commissioners choose to take in speeches (partisan, national, European) and in doing so we take the audience and venue of the speech into account. Empirically, we will focus on the more than 2,500 speeches given by members of the first Barroso Commission that are registered at the European Commission’s Press release database. Speeches are positioned using a word frequency-based approach. We expect the 431 speeches held in any of the EU institutions to have a strong policy-focus, while we expect ideology to feature more prominently in the 34 speeches held on party events. In addition to these speeches delivered in English, in a next step, we will also analyze speeches given in the Commissioner’s home country (and there possibly in her mother tongue), where we expect relatively more personal credit claiming.