EU Militant Democracy: Remapping the European Parliament Agenda-Setting and Veto Power Prerogativese

Hungary and Poland have made it clear that a Member State (MS) can maintain its membership in the European Union (EU) while breaching the core values of the EU itself (Müller, 2018). The only institution actively involved in contrasting democratic erosion in the EU arena seems to be the European Parliament (EP) (Feisel, 2020). The EP’s influence has significantly increased in the last four decades (Kreppel, 2002), while - during the same period of time - the presence of populist parties has constantly grown in the assembly, reaching unprecedented seatshare (Balnaves, et al., 2020). The paper explores the EP responses to democratic backsliding within member states, investigating whether - following the 2019 European elections marked by the rise of populist parties - adopted a militant democracy attitude, aiming to marginalize those seen as undermining liberal democratic institutions. In order to test whether the populist parties electoral success in several EU member states impacted the EP’s influence as an agenda-setter and/or veto player in the appointment of responsibility posts in terms of militant democracy, I’m going to put forward two hypotheses: H1: The more the presence of populist MEPs increased in the EP, the more the EP exerted its agenda-setting power in the composition of EP Committees and in the appointment of responsibility posts in the assembly. H2: The more the presence of populist MEPs increased in the EP, the more the EP stretched its veto-player prerogatives in the appointment of Commissioners. I will include in my analysis data related to the committee compositions, the appointments of Committee Chairs, Vice Chairs, Vice-Presidents, and Quaestors and Commissioners. Excluding the 7th parliamentary term, which can be viewed as a hybrid and transitional period where populist parties were consolidating power, I chose to compare data from 2004, 2014, and 2019.