From discursive to legislative Euroscepticism? The discourse-vote choice gap in the European Parliament

The strengthening of Eurosceptic voices in the European Parliament (EP) has raised doubts about its persistence as a fundamentally pro-European institution. Taking EU enlargement as a test case, our study examines MEPs’ discursive mobilisation and roll-call vote behaviour over the past two EP mandates (2009-2019). Drawing on an original dataset that matches 1’250 MEP statements on enlargement in EP debates with their vote choice across 47 subsequent roll-call votes, we find a gradual decline in support for enlargement at both the discursive and the voting levels. Discursive support for enlargement is systematically lower than support expressed in roll-call votes, with the exception of the hard Eurosceptic Europe of Nations and Freedom. Moreover, we find a higher discrepancy between discourses and votes among pro-European actors. These findings lead us to conclude that discursive patterns may act as an early warning sign of an impending Eurosceptic turn at the vote level. We may therefore expect the discursive contagion of Eurosceptic actors found in previous studies (Bélanger & Wunsch 2021) to eventually translate into more consequential legislative outcomes, eroding the EP’s status as the bulwark of pro-European policy-making.