Responding to whose priorities? EP political group positions in elections and in practice

This research thus builds on existing work, to argue that though necessarily broad, to appeal to a Europe-wide audience, the pre-election platforms issued at the times of European Parliament elections, represent a rare effort to create a shared cross-national partisan identity rooted in a clear set of policy preferences. These manifestos are a first step in the mandate process of representation, providing voters casting their ballots for national parties with a better understanding of the implications at the European level based on the policy commitments made by the various European political parties. Our project examines the extent to which the political groups within the EP live up to their election campaign commitments, as another link in the representational chain. To test our expectations, we use the newly released DEU IV dataset which provides a unique opportunity to evaluate both the consistency between the policy positions stated in the election manifestos and those pursued within the actual policy process in the EU and variations in this relationship between political groups. Through an analysis of the priority policy commitments made in the European party election manifestos for the EP elections in 2019 and the actual policy positions of the EP political groups during high stakes policy negotiations, this research provides initial insights into the extent to which there is a linkage between pre-election commitments and post-election policy outputs of the EP political groups over the past two decades.