The Political Opposition of the European Parliament

The European Parliament is a special case of a legislature. Rather than being internally divided between governing and opposition parties, it often acts collectively as an opposition to other EU core institutions. It negotiates with the Council on legislative acts; lacking a right of initiative, it attempts to influence the Commission’s agenda. Led by the party group leaders, lengthy discussions in the EP following the Commission president’s annual State of the Union Address (SOTEU) best illustrate these inter-institutional power dynamics. In addition, the EP has experienced a rise in ‘majority-opposition’ dynamics between party groups and an increase in the division between pro- and anti-European groups across the political spectrum. In this paper, through a software-assisted analysis of the debates following the SOTEU, we investigate party group leaders’ positive or negative evaluations of the Commission’s proposals. Focusing on the three latest legislatures (2009–present), our analysis shows that while all three forms of oppositional dynamics (collective, ‘majority-opposition,’ pro/anti-European) are present in the EP to varying degrees, traditional policy-based opposition is more pronounced than anti-system, anti-European opposition.