Leading the Opposition: Gender, Age and Experience in the European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) is a special case of a legislative. Rather than being internally divided between governing and opposition parties, it often acts collectively as an opposition to the EU core institutions. It negotiates with the Council on legislative acts; lacking a right of initiative, it attempts to exercise influence on the Commission’s agenda. Lengthy discussions in the EP following the presentation of the Commission’s Annual Work Programme or the Annual State of the Union Address illustrate this. Since the introduction of direct elections to the EP in 1979, nine women have led or co-led party groups in the EP. Among these groups, the Greens-European Free Alliance has practiced co-leadership with always a man and a woman heading the group. This has resulted in a greater variety of group leaders in regard to women’s representation, but also in other aspects such as seniority. This paper will study women’s opposition leadership in the EP by first examining their positional leadership, i.e. ascendance to becoming party group leaders, identifying pathways and patterns across different party groups. Furthermore, the paper analyzes behavioral leadership of the European Greens, by analyzing the performance of and possible differences between women group leaders versus men and young versus senior leaders. The empirical analysis will be based on the party group leaders’ speeches given in response to the Commission’s Annual Work Programme and the State of the Union Address (2010-2020).