The European Parliament (EP) has, despite its limited ability to control the selection of candidates in European Parliamentary elections, established a system of strong parties with high degree of voting cohesiveness. Over the last 3 decades, it has also developed from a merely consultative body to legislative equality via a series of legislative reform that have put the Council and the EP on equal standing in all policy areas where the ordinary legislative procedure (known as the codecision procedure prior to the Lisbon treaty). It is well established that the committees in the EP plays a key role in the legislative process. The rapporteur is responsible for navigating the proposal through the committee as well as the plenary, and when relevant, the bicameral negotiations with the Council. We investigate to what extent the party groups have used the allocation of committee reports as a ``carrot'''' in order to discipline its members into participating in voting and voting in line with the position of the party group. Our dataset consists of all reports allocated after the first direct elections in 1979 until June 2011. Our results shows that, within party groups, the allocation of reports works very much like a ``carrot''''. The active rapporteurs are those that participate in the votes, and when doing so, vote the party line. Clearly, those who write reports that are subject to inter-institutional bargaining are more active, loyal and experienced than those that write other reports, who again are more active and loyal than those who do not write reports. Hence, this finding collaborate with the strong party thesis of politics in the European Parliament.
