1. Democratic Legitimacy of the European Parliament: Finnish MEPs’ Constructions of European and National Political Cultures and Practices

The European Parliament (EP) has a unique parliamentary culture. On the one hand, it is shaped by specific practices emerging from its particular role within the sui generis political system of the EU. On the other hand, it also brings together representatives from 27 member states, each of them with their own national political cultures and, therefore, their own expectations towards the functioning of parliamentary democracy. Although diversity of political cultures has long been an issue in general EU research (e.g. Eatwell 1997, Mamadouh 1999, Athanassopoulou 2008), it has hardly been discussed in relation to the EP and questions about its democratic legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to analyse how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) construct the parliamentary culture and democratic practices at the transnational EP level and compare and contrast it to their national ones. We aim to assess how democracy and democratic practices are constructed in the process and what this means for the legitimacy of transnational democracy in the EP. The paper analyses these questions through a case study of Finnish MEPs’ constructions of the similarities and differences between the EP and the national parliament Eduskunta: How do Finnish MEPs see the EP as a parliament? How do they construct its political culture and practices in comparison to the Finnish parliament? What does this mean for the democratic legitimacy of the transnational parliament? We expect to analyse the constructions of what count as democratic practices in relation to: the size of the parliament and its heterogeneity in terms of political cultures; coping strategies of MEPs from a small member state; the lack of government-opposition dynamic in the EP as opposed to national contexts; and the perceived legitimacy of strategies to deal with increased politicization and polarization caused by the rise of the far right. The paper is based on a unique data-set consisting of a full sample of research interviews with all 15 Finnish MEPs in the 2024-2029 legislature. The interviews were carefully timed to take place a few months into the mandate. Many first-term MEPs, who had only recently transitioned from national politics, still had fresh impressions of their first experiences with the EP, highlighting differences between national and European political culture.