Who is Fighting Against the EU Energy and Climate Policy in the European Parliament?

The position of the European Parliament (EP) regarding energy-related topics develops primarily from the status given by the Treaty of Lisbon. In practice, it means that the EP has confirmed its role as a primary player in EU energy and climate policy by providing an upgraded version of the procedure known as ordinary legislative procedure (Schubert, Pollack and Kreutler 2016). The real impact of the EP on the development of EU energy and climate policy is therefore now indisputable. The EP as a whole can simply be characterized as an ambitious player in the field of energy policy which is, in general, trying to promote greater supranationalisation a transformation of this policy (Tosun, Biesenbender and Schulze 2015). At the same time, energy is still perceived as very ‘sensitive area’ for many countries, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe (Osička, Lehotský, Zapletalová, Černoch and Dančák 2018). The fundamental transformation of EU energy policy is perceived there as questionable topic which should be part of comprehensive debates about the future of the EU integration. In this debate, Visegrad Four countries are the most visible. In general, we focus on the internal coherence of the group, taking a closer look on the voting behaviour of V4 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and issues in which they vote differently as well as their voting affiliation with groups in EP. We believe that such kind of analysis not only brings new information about V4 countries itself but also provide us with new perspectives on the general perception of the sensitivity of the EU energy policy among member states. As such, the results are important also for the further development of the EU energy policy. Moreover, using voting data, we are able to identify possible substantial differences between V4 MEPs and the rest of MEPs in the European Parliament. We not only focus on the votes of the European Parliament in the case of ordinary legislative procedure during the eighth parliamentary term, we also analyse communication and parliamentary documents such as resolutions, etc. Findings are based on the analysis of roll call votes (RCV) in the European Parliament.