European Parliament Resolutions – Effective Agenda Setting or Whistling into the Wind?

The European Parliament (EP) is one of the most studied legislatures in the world. The general consensus in most of these analyses is that the power of the EP in the legislative decision-making processes of the EU has increased precipitously, particularly since the introduction of the codecision procedure. One continuing perceived weakness of the EP, however, is its inability to introduce new legislation. While the EP (as well as the EU Council) can request that the Commission initiate a specific policy proposal, it lacks the power to formally introduce bills itself. This is an anomaly among legislatures in democratic systems, which generally have at least the formal right to try to set the policy agenda through the initiation of bills. This research looks at the indirect agenda setting power of the EP through an analysis of EP own initiative (INI) and own legislative initiative (INL) resolutions and their impact on the policy agenda of the EU. The research introduces a new dataset on all EP resolutions (INI and INL) between 1997 and 2015 and compares the pre- and post- 2009 period, in order to assess whether the recent challenges to the role of the EP have affected its agenda-setting role. The results suggest that despite its lack of a formal power of initiative the EP is overall able to have a significant impact on the legislative agenda of the EU, surpassing that of many national parliaments which can initiate but have restricted autonomous decision-making authority.