The Internal Political Dynamics of VIIIth Parliament

The paper examines the internal political dynamics of the European Parliament (EP) during the VIIIth legislature. The EP was the first EC institution to attract the attention of scholars who were not Europeanists. Since 1979, specialists of elections and legislative studies have analyzed the many aspects of the EP and tried to compare it to other legislatures and to categorize it. The main puzzle for them was the absence of a clear majority within the EP: no party ever hold the majority and there has been no stable coalition until 2014. The question that soon arose in the literature was the following: is the deliberation of the EP driven by some sort of overall logic, or is it chaotic or flexible, with majorities that vary from vote to vote? In the first hypothesis, is the overall logic about a traditional left-right divide, a sort of ad hoc coalition or a specific cleavage, like the opposition between Europhiles and Eurosceptics? To answer those questions, a sophisticated literature has developed, using several approaches. Among those, scholars have focused on MEP’s voting behavior (roll call votes) or analyzed the negotiations between the groups in view of the election of the EP President. After the 2014 elections, for the first time, a formal coalition, named “the block”, has emerged between the groups S&D, EPP and ALDE, as a consequence of the Spitzenkandidaten procedure. However, it has been challenged at mid-term: in January 2017, the Socialists decided to end the agreement and to present their own candidate to the Presidency. Media and commentators talked about the end of the “grand coalition” and predicted a new era of decision-making, more political and conflictual.This paper will assess the impact of the creation and disappearance of the bloc on the voting behavior of members and groups, using data from the Observatory of European Institutions and other sources. The overall objective is to determine whether the existence of a formal coalition between July 2014 and January 2017 has had an impact on MEPs behavior, or if it was simply a symbol of long-standing political dynamics.