Abstract
This article provides an overview of the institutionalization of the European Parliament. Quantitative analysis, based on the biographies of Members of European Parliament on the sixth term (between 2004 and 2009), underlines the emergence of specialists who dominate the parliamentary space. First, we point out convergences in the modalities of political and social recruitment. The unattractiveness of the European Parliament (EP), compared to the national political space, has favoured the recruitment of actors who are less endowed with legitimate resources. For numerous members, the EP represents an opportunity for political professionalization. Second, we underline the emergence of a parliamentary elite with specific European resources and career types.
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Notes
We thank Jean-Yves Bart, Didier Georgakakis and the reviewers for helpful comments.
The list does not take into account the Bulgarian and Romanian MEPs who accessed the EP in 2007. It includes indicators linked to their demographical properties (gender, age), to socio-cultural properties (level and type of degree, past profession), to dispositions to internationalization (foreign degrees), to their political paths (type of mandates, career characteristics), as well as to their investment in the EP: Committees in which they sit, number of mandates and years in the EP, positions of power exercised (presidency and vice presidency of committees, of groups, member of the Bureau, delegation presidency), elements available on the EP website. Most of the present material comes from biographical dictionaries. These data are completed by an overview of information from the existing literature, which allows us to carry out useful diachronic comparisons.
French MEPs, who are among the oldest in the parliament (56 years and 2 months), are, nevertheless, younger than national MPs (56 years and 9 months; (source: French national assembly) and senators (61 years; source: French Senate, 2008).
The enlargement was beneficial to right-wing political groups: although MEPs from the 10 accession countries of 2004 represent 22 per cent of the Parliament, the UEN group is mostly composed of MEPs from accessing countries, the EPP composed of one-fourth, and there are only 15 per cent of them in the three left-wing groups (only 2 per cent for the Greens/EFA, 17 per cent for PSE and 20 per cent for GUE).
Included in several national legislations, the prohibition of the combination of European and national mandates was introduced in 2002 in the Brussels’ Act of 20 November 1976 on the election of MEPs.
On average, 9 and 8.2 years at the EP for the Germans and the British against 6.4 years for the French (in the fourth position), only 3.7 and 3.5 for the Swedish and the Greeks, 5.5 for all of them and 6.6 for those from the first 15. Owing to a number of elements specific to this country (in particular, the mode of election), the British seem to be, however, a more Europe-specialized personnel than average (Westlake, 2004).
These positions are filled every 2.5 years, at the beginning and in the middle of each of the terms. The bureau is elected by secret ballot and by an absolute majority of member votes and the number of votes determines the order of precedence. The group's presidents are elected based on principles that are similar in each group, whereas the committee presidents (in the same way as presidents of delegations and vice presidents of committees and delegations) are designated using the ‘d’Hondt system’: the number of each group's appointed positions depends on the number of members; the groups then share the positions that they were attributed between their different delegations, and eventually internal delegations in the groups submit names for given positions (but this choice must be endorsed by the group bureau). Their strategic character has considerably increased along with the complexity of parliamentary games, the growth of the institution's internal division of labour and the affirmation of the EP in inter-institutional games.
In this sense, the appointment of J. Daul as the leader of the EPP group after only one mandate and a half is exceptional. As soon as he arrived in the EP, however, different elements gave him symbolic resources and specialized skills likely to be promptly made profitable in the EP.
The institutionalization of the EP and the development of the internal political division of labour, which has resulted from the diversification of its skills, match, on the institutional level, the increasing domination of hierarchical structures (the bureau), of political groups and parliamentary committees.
The active variables are: gender, four indicators of political career (having formerly been a minister, national MP, local representative and mayor), two indicators of diploma (degree level and being a PhD holder) and finally, two indicators on career at the EP (the number of mandates in the EP and the occupation of a leadership position in the EP). Owing to an excessively large number of modalities and sometimes a small number of MEPs, the initial profession, nationality and detailed leadership positions (member of the bureau, presidency and vice presidency of committees and groups) are supplementary variables; they do not contribute to the construction of the axes but can be projected on the map with the active variables.
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Beauvallet, W., Michon, S. Professionalization and socialization of the members of the European Parliament. Fr Polit 8, 145–165 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2010.6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2010.6