Walking on eggshells? Voting behaviour in the EU in times of agri-food reforms

Agricultural policymaking in the EU is undergoing important transformations which is evident in the ongoing Farm to Fork Strategy. New issues such as animal welfare gain importance to meet sustainability goals. In this reform process, it is interesting to look at positions of political actors and how their positions evolve over time. Political parties from the member states but also national interest groups articulate their interests primarily through the European Parliament. In this paper, we therefore analyse different determinants of decision-making behaviour of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and how they change over time. While there is a bunch of literature regarding the voting behaviour of MEPs in areas such as social and economic policymaking, we know comparatively little about voting patterns in the area of agricultural policymaking. With the aim to fill this research gap we analyse votes on agricultural policymaking issues from 2006-2022 regarding national, party political and committee belonging in order to find out more about possible predictors. As current agricultural policies are often related to the domain of environmental policymaking, we are also interested in how voting behaviour in these two policy areas is interrelated and to what degree decision-making is integrated.