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Let's Talk Europe -

Parliamentary Communication in EU Affairs

Katrin Auel (auel@ihs.ac.at) Olga Eisele (eisele@ihs.ac.at)

Lucy Kinski (kinski@ihs.ac.at)

Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna

Work in progress

ECPR General Conference

University of Glasgow, 3 - 6 September 2014

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Let’s Talk Europe - Parliamentary Communication in EU Affairs

Katrin Auel, Olga Eisele and Lucy Kinski

Abstract

Within the EU, the opacity of policy-making processes and the resulting lack of

accountability of decision-makers have been defined as core problems of democratic

legitimacy in both academic and political debate. Here, it has been argued that national

parliaments are in a unique position to contribute to making EU politics more democratic by

communicating EU issues to their citizens. Yet given the scarcity of (comparative) empirical

studies on how parliaments fulfil their communication functions in EU affairs we are hardly

in a position to assess to what degree parliaments actually live up to these expectations. The

aim of the paper is twofold: The first aim is to investigate how national parliaments fulfil

their communication function in EU affairs and how differences between parliaments can be

explained. Our data reveals that political contestation in public opinion has a positive impact,

while contestation within parliament may even hamper communication of EU affairs. The

second aim is to examine whether parliamentary communication actually has a positive,

legitimising impact. Do communication efforts by national parliaments actually matter? Our

data suggests that it does.

Introduction

For a long time, the European project drew its legitimacy from its capacity to solve

problems effectively, and the process of integration was accompanied by what has been

called the permissive consensus (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970). It was based on a

consensus across the political mainstream that integration was desirable, and citizens

permitted their political elites to pursue this course without much interference. Today, there

seems to be neither firm consensus nor much permissiveness. Until the early 1990s, the

public could simply be ignored. Over ten years ago, Pollak and Slominski (2002: 3) observed

that, ‘supranational and national executive elites are confronted with a reluctant public who

increasingly shows signs of disaffection if not utter disapproval of European politics’. Since

then, things have not improved much (Usherwood and Starting 2013). Most recently, the

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eurozone crisis has clearly increased public dissatisfaction and public Euroscepticism

(Serricchio et al. 2013). Importantly, this growing public dissatisfaction with integration has

also filtered through to party politics (Conti 2013). There is little doubt that the permissive

consensus has firmly given way to a ‘constraining dissensus’ (Hooghe and Marks 2009),

which can be seen as at least partly the result of a growing sense of alienation based on

difficulties in understanding, let alone participating in, remote decision-making at the EU

level and a fear of helplessness vis-à-vis political decisions that cannot be influenced or

controlled.

Within the debate on the democratic deficit, the opacity of policy-making processes and

the lack of accountability within the multi-level system of the EU have therefore been

identified as the core problems of democratic legitimacy (e.g., Bovens et al. 2010; Curtin et

al. 2010; Gustavsson et al. 2009; Harlow 2002; Héritier 2003; Mair 2005; Puntscher

Riekmann 2007), which has led to demands for more openness and transparency of European

institutions. And the EU has indeed reacted, especially by using the Internet, to increase its

transparency by providing more and formerly inaccessible information to citizens. Yet it

remains rather questionable whether this provision of information – as welcome as it is –

actually does increase the legitimacy of the EU given the highly technical nature of many of

the documents available as well as the sheer quantity of information leading to information

overload (Curtin and Meijer 2006).

More importantly, much of the debate focuses purely on the European level and the

European institutions. The demand for transparency and information in EU issues, however,

is at least as fundamental at the national level. That EU policy problems, solutions,

alternatives, and conflicts be debated in public and that decision-makers be publicly held

accountable for their decisions to allow citizens to exercise their control are fundamental pre-

conditions for the legitimacy of domestic EU policy-making and thus the EU as a whole.

Here, it has been argued that national parliaments are in a unique position to ensure that

people are more connected with ‘Europe’ and its activities by serving as channels between

citizens and the EU (Norton 2001). And by holding their governments accountable, that is by

inducing them to explain European issues and decisions, to clarify European negotiation

situations and to justify their negotiation behaviour, national parliaments are believed to

contribute to raising public awareness for EU policies, and thus making the EU more visibly

present in national politics and more accessible to and for their national public (Auel 2007).

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Given the scarcity of (comparative) empirical studies on how parliaments fulfil their

communication functions in EU affairs, however, we are hardly in a position to assess to

what degree parliaments actually do serve as channels between the EU and the citizens. It

may be true that ‘parliaments provide a major space for public debate and are thus the ideal

arenas for the deliberation of important European issues and their national implications’

(Auel 2007: 498), but we still know fairly little about whether they actually live up to these

expectations. Claims that all is well at the national level in terms of the democratic legitimacy

of EU politics seem therefore rather premature.

Against this background, the aim of the paper is twofold: The first aim is to investigate

how national parliaments fulfil their communication function in EU affairs and how

differences between parliaments can be explained. The second aim is to examine whether

parliamentary communication actually has a positive, legitimising impact. Do communication

efforts by national parliaments actually matter? The paper is structured as follows: The first

section discusses political communication and parliamentary communication activities and

provides an overview over the, so far fairly scarce, literature on parliamentary

communication in EU affairs. The next section develops the theoretical framework to explain

variation in the parliamentary communication activities based on agency theory. Drawing

attention to the fact that communication mainly refers to the role of MPs as agents of their

citizens, we develop hypotheses on the impact of institutional strength as well as electoral

incentives. Section four presents the data followed by the empirical analysis in section five.

In the final section, we we turn to the question whether parliamentary communication

actually makes a difference, by investigating the relationship between parliamentary

communication activities and the level of citizens’ trust in different institutions as well as

their satisfaction with democracy at the national and the EU level. The final section discusses

the findings and concludes.

Parliamentary Communication

The paper deals with parliamentary communication as a means to legitimise democratic

governance. Parliamentary communication is a type of political communication which is

ultimately viewed as central to formulating and articulating political interests, aggregating

them to arbitrable programmes as well as implementing and legitimising political decisions

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(Jarren and Donges 2006: 22; translated by authors). It can be defined ‘… as purposeful

communication about politics … [incorporating] … [a]ll forms of communication undertaken

by politicians and other political actors for the purpose of achieving specific objectives’

(McNair, 2011: 4).

Our study is concerned with parliamentary communication as any publicly accessible

effort by a parliamentary actor of informing, educating and/or mobilizing citizens. This

definition tries to synthesize the common features of the many existing accounts of the

parliamentary communication function (Bagehot (2009 [1867]; Mill 1998 [1861]; Patzelt

2003; Raunio 2011). It has three key aspects: (1) As a tool to legitimise political decisions,

parliamentary communication has to be publicly accessible for the citizens for reasons of

accountability. In modern democracies, this is mostly guaranteed via the mass media (Bennett

and Entman 2001; Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999). (2) Parliament as a political actor has to be

deconstructed into its operating parts to make a meaningful analysis of parliamentary

communication possible. Marschall distinguishes three actor levels at which communication

may take place (1999: 23): (I) The individual level – members of parliament, (II)

parliamentary party groups, and (III) parliament as a whole. (3) When informing, educating

and/or mobilizing citizens, the former two groups of actors follow the logic of political

contestation, communicating a favourable picture of themselves in line with their own

ideological stance while downgrading others. Parliament as an institution, on the other hand,

has to provide balanced information regarding parliamentary processes in terms of

transparency, education and integration (Sarcinelli and Tenscher 2000: 86; see table 1). These

two underlying logics require a differentiated analysis since the achievement of different

objectives is grounded in different motivations: While MPs and party groups are competing

for votes, parliaments do not have to seek re-election. Due to space limitations, however, this

paper focuses on the analysis of communication following the logic of political contestation.

In the following, which draws heavily on Auel and Raunio (2014a), we therefore discuss the

main instruments of MPs and parliamentary party groups (PPGs) to communicate EU politics

to the citizens.

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Table 1: Functions and Levels of Parliamentary Communication

Functional Logic and Aims

Actor Level Political Contestation Institutional

Parliament

----

Neutral, balanced communication regarding

parliament as a whole: Integration, education,

transparency, agenda-setting and

interpretation relevant for parliament as an

institution

PPGs/

MPs

Party political communication:

Representation, agenda-setting,

positive self-depiction vs.

downgrading political opponents

-----

Competing for Votes - MPs and PPGs as Political Actors

Plenary Debates: Plenary debates are certainly the most important means of parliaments

to communicate issues to their citizens. They can provide an effective forum for both

articulating and representing societal interests and informing the electorate about issues on

the political agenda. Parliamentary democracy is, when it comes down to it, organised public

dispute, in which the government and its supporting party/parties define problems and

propose solutions while the opposition (and representatives/actors outside the parliamentary

arena) criticise them and develop alternatives. As the German Constitutional Court stressed in

its 2009 decision on the Lisbon Treaty (BVerfGE 2009) and again in its recent decision on

Organstreit proceedings regarding the Bundestag’s participation rights in decisions on the

EFSF in 2012: ‘Open negotiations between argument and counter-argument, public debate

and discussion are vital elements of democratic parliamentarism. The degree of publicity of

debates and decision-making ensured by parliamentary proceedings opens up opportunities

for balancing conflicting interests and provides the preconditions for control by the citizens’

(BVerfGE 2012, para 108). Parliamentary debates are, of course, no guarantee for

transparency given that information and justifications can be obscured by strategies of ‘blame

shifting’ and ‘credit claiming’ (Lord and Pollak 2010: 977f.). But parliamentary debates

provide the means by which the justifications of some (i.e. government, governing parties)

can be continuously challenged by others within (the opposition) and outside of the

parliamentary arena (media, interests groups etc.) and thus be exposed to the best of

disinfectants, sunshine (Brandeis 1914).

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Oral and Written Questions: MPs and PPGs have various tools for holding the

government accountable. And in many ways they have become better at controlling

governments – reforms of parliamentary rules of procedure and committee systems have

facilitated oversight of the government, and parliamentary actors are also making more active

use of various scrutiny mechanisms. The reforms and developments have primarily aimed at

reducing the informational advantage of the government through investing more resources in

committee work and demanding more regular information from the cabinet about its activities

(Strøm et al. eds. 2003; Baldwin ed. 2006). Parliamentary questions are used in every EU

national legislature, but there is variation between the parliaments regarding both the types of

questions used and the procedural details concerning the submission and answering of

questions (Wiberg 1995; Strøm et al. eds. 2003; Russo and Wiberg 2010). With regard to

parliamentary communication, questions are particularly interesting instruments as they are

multi-functional and MPs can ask questions for several reasons. Among the most important

are asking for information, committing the government to making a public formal statement

and pressing it for action, defending constituency interests, and informing the policy-makers

of problems they might be unfamiliar with. The attractiveness of parliamentary questions is

enhanced by the fact that in their questions MPs can practically raise any issue they want.

‘Parliamentary question time’ also seems to gain more attention in the media than other

parliamentary activities, at least where ministers or heads of government have to react to

questions not known beforehand (Salmond 2014).

Communication of EU Affairs?

As mentioned above, due to the main focus on the legislative functions of national

parliaments in EU matters in the literature, we still know little about how the different means

of parliamentary communication are used in EU affairs. This research has shown that while

European matters have become slightly more important for electoral party competition over

time, they still do not play an important role in domestic election campaigns (Budge et. al.

2001; Kriesi 2007, Kritzinger and Michalowitz 2005, for an overview Ladrech 2009). But we

know much less about how national parliaments (and the parties acting within them) fulfil

their communication function in EU affairs during off-election periods. A study by Bergman

et al. (2003), suggested that national parliaments were hardly living up to the promise of

communication in EU affairs. In the plenary, Europe seemed a rare guest outside of debates

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about Treaty changes (Maatsch 2010) or on sessions of the European Council (Van den Steeg

2010).

A recent collection of studies also paints a rather sobering picture (Auel and Raunio

2014b). EU affairs have gained in importance over the last two decades within national

parliaments, and they now also provide far more information on EU politics for their citizens,

for example by publishing EU and parliamentary documents on their websites. Analysing

parliamentary questions in the French Assemblée Nationale, Navarro and Brouard (2014)

also show that parliamentary attention for EU issues has slowly increased over time, but still

focuses mainly on the ‘big issues’ such as treaty negotiations or the French Presidency. A

comparison of EU debates in four national parliaments, however, confirmed that especially

day-to-day EU matters, and thus issues not part of the EU’s high politics, were rarely debated

(Auel and Raunio 2014c). Debates did, occasionally, take place on high profile EU decisions,

such as the Service Directive, but often only after an ex-ante politicisation of the issue by

actors outside the parliamentary arena and intensive reporting in the media (Miklin 2014a).

An active politicisation of EU issues through national parliaments, in contrast, was fairly rare

(Auel and Raunio 2014c): Between 2002 and 2010, EU matters were debated in less than 5 to

6 per cent of all plenary sessions in the British House of Commons or the French Assemblée

Nationale. In the Finnish Eduskunta, which together with the Danish Folketing is regarded as

one of the most powerful and active parliaments in the EU, Auel and Raunio found literally

only a handful of plenary debates between 2002 and 2010. In Austria, the Nationalrat decided

to make EU matters more of a plenary issue and established 4 EU days per year. These were

quickly whittled down to four EU hours per year. Interestingly, De Ruiter (2014) has found a

similar reluctance to communicate EU matters also regarding policy issues integrated under

the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The OMC deals with policy issues that are from

an electoral point of view highly relevant, such as employment or social policy. At the same

time, the OMC’s benchmarking processes provide national parliaments with important

information to monitor and assess their government’s policies. Still, parliamentary debates on

OMC issues were rare. Even opposition groups rarely ‘go public’ with information about the

performance of their governments or use OMC information to shame the government

publicly for suboptimal outcomes or low benchmarking results. Garcia Lupato’s (2014)

analysis of budget and investiture debates in Italy and Spain, finally, demonstrates that

government parties did use references to the EU in debates, but mainly to legitimise their own

policies. In addition, while he observed a slowly growing politicisation of EU issues in Italy,

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the overall party consensus on EU matters in both Spain and Italy ‘implies that there is not a

real debate on European issues in general parliamentary debates. This de-politicization can …

produce a clear deficit in the relation between the parliamentary debate, political competition

and the voters’ (Garcia Lupato 2014: 106).

There are, however, also indications in the literature that parliaments may have increased

their communication efforts more recently and mainly as a reaction to the eurozone crisis.

Auel and Höing, for example, conclude that the crisis had a considerable impact on plenary

debates between 2010 and 2012: across all 27 national parliaments of the EU, on average

more than 40 per cent of all EU debates focused on crisis-related issues (Auel and Höing

2014). Studies have also found an increased politicisation of the EU in the plenaries due to

the crisis. In Austria, Italy and Germany, Puntscher Riekmann and Wydra (2013: 575-6) find

that opposition parties contested ‘the socio-economic orientation of the policies (e.g. social

European market order vs. neoliberal) as well as the advocacy of allegedly inevitable

accompanying measures (e.g. further austerity measures), and demanded a different direction

for policies (e.g. a financial transaction tax; more equitable distribution of tax burdens)’.

Similarly, Wendler’s results suggest a deepened party polarisation over both, EU integration

and competing party ideologies in the debates on the crisis management and EMU

development in Austria, France, Germany and the UK (Wendler 2014).

To explain parliamentary communication efforts, the following chapter discusses

theoretical foundations and incentives motivating MPs and PPGs to communicate European

issues to their citizens.

Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses

Rational-choice and principal-agent models have become prominent approaches to the

study of political representation in general and the role of national parliaments in EU affairs

in particular. Kiewiet and McCubbins (1991: 239-40) define an agency relationship as

‘established when an agent has delegated … the authority to take action on behalf of … the

principal’. One of the basic assumptions of agency theory is that any delegation of power to

an agent creates risks for the principal.1 Once entrusted by the principal, the agent is expected

to realise the principal’s interest. Insofar as his own interests diverge from those of the

1 For a detailed discussion see Akerlof 1970; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991; Lupia 2003.

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principal, however, he is inclined to realise his own interests at the cost of the principal’s. As

a result, the agent fails to act in the best interest of his principal (shirking) or might even act

against the interests of the principal (sabotage) (Brehm and Gates 1997). These problems are

severely increased by asymmetries of information between the principal and her agent with

regard to information on the agent’s preferences and skills as well as information on the

concrete circumstances of the task to fulfil (hidden information) and information on the

agent’s actions (hidden action). While the former mainly results in adverse selection

(selection of an unsuitable agent), the latter may lead to moral hazard (the agent acts not in

accordance with the interests of the principal; shirking and sabotage). As a result, delegation

is fraught with a fundamental dilemma: ‘the principal needs the agent in order to get a task

done but cannot trust the agent to act truly in [her] interest; the agent, on the other hand,

wants to be assigned the task but can only [continue to, the authors] obtain the task if [she]

proves trustworthy to the principal’ (Behnke 2008: 14, see also Fenno 1977: 898-9). The

most important aim related to delegation for the principal is thus minimising agency loss.

Agency loss can be defined as the difference between the actual consequence of delegation

and what the consequence would have been had the agent perfectly realised the principal’s

interests (Lupia 2003: 35). For the agent, on the other hand, the most important aim is to

signal to his principal that he is trustworthy, i.e. that agency loss is indeed negligible, in order

to secure continued authorisation.

Applied to national parliaments and the EU, the underlying assumption is that MPs as

principals (or more specifically the governing parties) delegate authority in EU affairs to their

agent – the government – and can then employ various means of control to prevent agency

loss in terms of EU policy output and outcome (see also Winzen 2012). When it comes to the

communication function, however, the logic is quite different from that underlying scrutiny

and oversight activities: Here, MPs act as agents of their citizens – and in most cases, they

would very much like to keep that job: In one of the earliest and most influential

contributions, Mayhew (1974: 5) argued that legislative behaviour could be best understood

if legislators were seen as ‘single-minded seekers of reelection’, re-election being the

preference that ‘underlies everything else, as indeed it should if we are to expect that the

relations between politicians and public will be one of accountability’ (Mayhew 1974: 16-7).

We therefore follow Cox and McCubbins (1993: 100) in accepting ‘the usual emphasis on

re-election’ as not necessarily the only, but the most important component of legislators’

motivation that ‘is reasonable to consider in isolation’ (see also Katznelson and Weingast

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2005: 8; Schlesinger 1991: 39-40, Strom 1997, Saalfeld 2003, 2005). To be re-elected by

their voters, MPs and PPGs must demonstrate credibility and signal to their voters that they

represent their interests. To maintain the trust of their voters and to be re-authorised, they

therefore need to be seen to fulfil their duties. Only public action can adequately signal

trustworthiness to the principal. According to Mayhew (1974) they therefore have to focus on

three basic routines or activities: Advertising (making yourself seen), credit claiming and

position taking. In sum, parliaments are expected to accompany decision-making processes

not only by scrutinising and controlling their governments, but also by communicating EU

politics to their citizens and being publicly accountable.

Communicating EU affairs does, however, not only depend on these electoral incentives,

but the strategies MPs choose to further their goal of re-election crucially depend on

institutional incentives (Shepsle 1989; Tsebelis 2002). Institutions such as parliamentary

rules and capacities influence parliamentarians in that they enable certain courses of action,

while restricting others:

‘Besides all their other charming idiosyncracies, legislators are goal-seeking men or

women who chose their behaviour to fit the destinations they have in mind. In doing so

they have to pay close attention to the institutions in which they operate’ (Strøm 1997:

158).

Hence, we can differentiate between institutional and electoral incentives explaining

parliamentary communication in EU affairs. In the following, we develop hypotheses on the

impact of those two sets of incentives on the level of parliamentary communication in EU

affairs.

Institutional Incentives for Communication: Strength in EU affairs

The literature on national parliaments in the EU2 has identified (domestic) institutional

strength as one of the most important factors that explain the development of tight scrutiny

procedures (Bergman 1997, 2000; Dimitrakopoulos 2001; Holzhacker, 2005; Karlas 2012;

Martin 2000; Maurer and Wessels 2001; Raunio 2005; Saalfeld 2005). ‘Indeed, research on

explaining cross-national variation in the level of scrutiny in EU matters indicates that the

2 Due to space limitations, this article cannot present a comprehensive overview of the literature, but Goetz and

Meyer-Sahling (2008), Raunio (2009), Winzen (2010) and Rozenberg and Hefftler (forthcoming) provide

excellent reviews.

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overall strength of the legislature ‘spills over’ to European affairs, with stronger control of

the government in domestic matters producing also tighter cabinet scrutiny in European

affairs’ (Raunio 2009: 330, FN 11). Similarly, research has shown that scrutiny activities of

national parliaments depend to a considerable extent on their institutional strength in EU

affairs. This is not surprising, given that institutional opportunities are a precondition for

effective scrutiny activity. When it comes to parliamentary communication of EU issues,

however, it has been argued that a different logic may be at play and that stronger

institutional power may not lead to more communication of EU issues. On the contrary,

governing parties, in particular those of strong national parliaments, may rather want to

monitor the government behind closed doors without public criticism that might damage the

reputation of the cabinet (Auel 2007, Auel and Raunio 2014a). Excluding the public

facilitates negotiations between the government and the national parliament on the national

positions at the EU level. Public debate on these positions may not only uncover conflicts

within the governing party/coalition, but would ultimately weaken the negotiation position

through making it accessible and attackable for other member states. Indeed, the main parties

in several EU countries, especially in the Nordic region, have deliberately ‘depoliticised’

European integration through cross-party cooperation in the EAC with the aim of

manufacturing consensus in national integration policy (Bergman and Damgaard eds. 2000).

Thus, it can be expected that MPs in institutionally strong parliaments, i.e. those with

effective scrutiny and control instruments, focus more on influencing policy behind closed

doors in committee or parliamentary party group meetings. On the contrary, MPs in

institutionally weaker parliaments may try to compensate this lack of control via a stronger

focus on the communication function (Auel and Rittberger 2006).

H1: Competition between control and communication function: The stronger

parliamentary control and oversight powers in EU affairs, the less likely it is that

MPs/parliamentary party groups fulfil their communication function in EU affairs.

Closely connected is the question of the degree to which EU affairs have been delegated to

Committees. All national parliaments have created European Affairs Committees (EACs),

and we can generally observe an emphasis of committee work in EU affairs. Whether EACs

are the main body responsible for EU scrutiny, or whether they function more as a clearing

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house, selecting important EU documents and coordinating the scrutiny activities of the

standing committees, parliamentary scrutiny is mainly committee based. Nonetheless,

national parliaments differ with regard to the degree of delegation of EU affairs to

committees: In some parliaments, the EACs (or other standing committees) regularly act on

behalf of the entire parliament, i.e. when adopting resolutions or mandates. In others,

however, a vote in the plenary is needed to issue a formal parliamentary statement. Far-

reaching delegation of EU affairs to committees can therefore be expected to reduce

parliamentary communication as it limits the involvement of the plenary. This is also not

adequately compensated by debates within the committees. In many parliaments EAC and

other standing committees meet behind closed doors, which often3 makes their proceedings

inaccessible to the public. And even where committee meetings are public, they usually

generate less attention from the media than plenary debates.

H2: Delegation to committees: The lower the degree of delegation of EU affairs to

committees, the more likely it is that MPs/parliamentary party groups fulfil their

communication function in EU affairs.

The third assumption addresses the broader parliamentary context. MPs and PPGs are

embedded in a complex system where rules specifically related to EU affairs are not the only

ones that matter. For the communication function, the distinction between working and

debating parliament becomes especially relevant (Loewenberg and Patterson 1979; Steffani

1979). While working parliaments emphasize committee work, debating parliaments stress

public confrontation in the plenary. In addition, working parliaments are, on average, more

consensual, providing opposition parties with greater policy influence within committee

meetings. In contrast, opposition parties in debating parliaments focus on criticising the

government in plenary debates. While the degree of professionalisation, division of labour

and thus committee work has increased in many parliaments in the EU (Longely and

Davidson 1998), these differences in parliamentary tradition still persist. Typical examples

for the former are the Nordic parliaments (Bergman and Strøm 2011), while the British

House of Commons clearly is the ‘ideal’ example of a debating chamber.

3 In some parliaments, Committees do meet in private but provide stenographic minutes ex post.

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H3: Working vs. debating parliament: The more parliaments emphasise public

confrontation in the plenary over committee work, the more likely it is that

MPs/parliamentary party groups fulfil their communication function in EU affairs.

Electoral Incentives for Communication I: EU Salience and Eurocepticism

The literature on the Europeanisation of national parliaments has clearly indicated that, in

addition to institutional factors, electoral incentives also have an impact on the development

of tighter scrutiny procedures in EU affairs (Raunio and Wiberg 2000, Raunio 2005, Winzen

2013). As discussed above, despite existing differences, the publics in many member states

are no longer only indifferent towards the EU, but do not approve of it or even outright

oppose it (Usherwood and Startin 2013). MPs in member states where public opinion is

generally more critical of EU integration are therefore considered to have a greater incentive

to scrutinise EU affairs to assure their voters that they will defend their interests at the

European level. As Raunio has shown for the EU-15, the power of parliament independent of

integration was the only necessary condition, whereas the combination of having a powerful

parliament and a Eurosceptic electorate were sufficient conditions for producing tighter

procedures for the control of the government in EU matters. These findings can also be

applied to the parliamentary communication of EU affairs. It is reasonable to assume that in

member states where public opinion is generally more critical of EU integration, MPs as

citizens’ agents also have an electoral incentive to communicate EU affairs due to the

potential electoral impact of EU politics. The greater the level of public Euroscepticism, the

more MPs and their parliamentary party groups need to try and (re-)gain voters’ trust in the

European integration project in general and their own European policies in particular

H4: Public Euroscepticism: The stronger Euroscepticism in public opinion, the more likely

it is that MPs/parliamentary party groups fulfil their communication function in EU affairs.

Public Euroscepticism, however, can be expected to have less of an electoral impact, if

coupled with lukewarm salience of EU issues. Studies have indeed repeatedly shown the

importance of high EU issue salience for issue voting in national elections (i.e. De Vries

2007, 2010a). In other words, if EU issues do not play a vital role in voters’ considerations, it

does not matter as much whether or not they hold Eurosceptic opinions. Referring to

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Lindberg and Scheingold’s (1970) famous dictum, EU issues will have a limited electoral

impact where a ‘permissive dissensus’ prevails. In turn, a high salience of EU issues can of

course, also be coupled with a generally more positive attitude towards EU integration in

public opinion. MPs in member states where EU issues are more salient are therefore

expected to have a greater electoral incentive ‘to profile themselves on these issues and signal

their positions to voters’ (De Wilde 2010: 72).

H5: Public EU Salience: The more salient EU affairs are in public perception, the more

likely it is that MPs/parliamentary party groups fulfil their communication function in EU

affairs.

Electoral Incentives for Communication II: Parliamentary Euroscepticism

Above, we discussed our assumptions about the general impact of electoral incentives on

parliamentary communication efforts and highlighted public Euroscepticism and the salience

of EU issues. However, these general assumptions have to be qualified as it may not always

be in the interest of parties to politicise EU issues (Auel and Raunio 2014c). For mainstream

parties (and especially governing parties, see below), EU issues are often more a liability than

an asset (De Vries 2010b). Reasons are internal dissent over EU integration (Edwards 2009)

or the fact that they are generally more Europhile than their voters (Mattila and Raunio 2012).

We therefore expect the electoral incentives discussed above to be greatest for anti-EU

parties. They have a special motivation to broaden their voter base, which is likely to be

limited given their position on the left-right dimension. Thus, they have an interest in

politicising issues on which they can successfully compete with other parties, and ‘Europe’

provides such an issue: While anti-EU parties on the right end of the political spectrum tend

to capitalise on issues of national sovereignty and identity, parties on the left appeal more to

fears of a ‘neoliberal’ Europe and social insecurities (De Vries and Edwards 2009). Hence,

both left and right wing extremist parties have an incentive to politicise EU topics, not least

by triggering public confrontations in parliament.

H6: Share of Anti-EU parties: The greater the share of anti-EU parties in parliament, the

more likely it is that MPs/parliamentary party groups fulfil their communication function in

EU affairs.

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While governing parties are usually more supportive of European integration we can also

find parties that are less enthusiastic – the British Conservatives being the most famous

example. This creates problems especially for coalitions. While disagreements between

coalition partners increase the incentives to ‘police the bargain’ (Martin and Vanberg 2004,

see also Winzen 2013: 304-305), governing parties have no incentive to wash their dirty

laundry in public, but rather to smooth out dissent internally to uphold ‘the public impression

of efficiency and competence’ (Schüttemeyer 2009: 5, see also Auel 2007). Thus, where

disagreement between coalition partners on EU issues is high, coalition partners have an even

stronger interest in de-politicisation.

H7: Coalition disagreement over EU integration: The greater the disagreement over

European integration between governing parties, the less likely it is that MPs/parliamentary

party groups fulfil their communication function in EU affairs.

Case Selection, Data and Operationalization

For the empirical analysis we selected the parliaments (lower houses only) of Austria,

Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK. These seven member states were

chosen to provide a representative subgroup in terms of size, length of membership,

geographical location and public opinion on EU integration. In addition, their parliaments

differ in terms of their formal power in EU affairs (Auel et al. 2014), the share of anti-EU

parties as well as the type of government (minimal winning coalition: Poland, France,

Germany, UK; oversized coalition: Finland; grand coalition: Austria; minority

government/single party government: Spain).

As outlined above, our dependent variables for the quantitative analysis are the number of

oral and written questions as well as the number and duration of plenary debates in these

seven parliaments over a period of 4 years (2010 to 2013). To ensure that results are not

biased by the size of parliament, the absolute number of questions was divided by the number

of MPs. Similarly, to take into account that the length of debates varies between parliaments,

we not only looked at the absolute number of debates on EU topics in 2010-2013, but also at

the time spent on debating EU issues. Data on the parliamentary activities was collected in

17

the context of the PACE research project4, using mainly parliamentary websites as sources.

5

Coders also requested and confirmed data with parliamentary information offices directly. In

addition, we draw on data6 collected in the context of the OPAL research network (see Auel

et al. 2014b). Table 2 gives an overview over the activities.

Table 2: Parliamentary Communication Activities 2010 - 2013

Number of

debates7

Hours of debates Oral questions Written questions

all issues

abs. (av.) 17156 (2451) 60771 (8682) 511094 (73013)

EU issues

abs. (av.) 598 (85) 1231.5 (195) 1012 (145) 5130 (733)

non-EU

issues

abs. (av.)

15925 (2256) 59810 (8544) 505964 (72280)

% EU out

of all

issues

7.2% 1.67% 1 %

Note: The table provides absolute numbers for the communication activities for all seven parliaments with the

average in parentheses.

As the table shows, the overall communication activity of national parliaments, with over

seventeen thousand hours of debate, over sixty thousand oral questions and over five hundred

thousand written questions, is quite impressive. However the balance sheet is somewhat less

impressive when it comes to EU affairs. Only around 7 per cent of the overall debating time

is spent on EU issues, and the percentage for oral and written questions is far lower.

The aggregate numbers do, of course, obscure vast differences between the seven

parliaments. Figure 1 therefore presents the data for the individual parliaments.

4 www.ihs.ac.at/pace

5 The data collection took place between November 2013 and June 2014 on the basis of a detailed codebook.

Each coded activity was documented in a PDF file, and the data was checked both during the coding process

and ex post by two supervisors individually to ensure accuracy. 6 This includes data on debates from 2010 to 2012.

7 Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain information on the overall number of debates on all issues. We can

therefore only compare the time spent on debates.

18

Figure 1: Number of Communication Activities

Figure 1 already disconfirms two of our assumptions on institutional incentives outlined

above: Overall, the distinction between working and debating parliaments does not seem to

impact communication activities in EU affairs systematically: Among the working

parliaments we find active debaters, especially Austria, Germany and Finland; the UK House

of Commons, in contrast, is the only debating chamber with a higher number of EU debates,

while the French Assemblée Nationale or the Spanish Congreso provide clear counter

examples. Thus, the general distinction between working and debating parliaments seems to

have little explanatory value in EU affairs – at least not during our period under investigation

(2010 to 2013).

Our hypothesis on the degree of delegation of EU matters to committees is also not

confirmed. Resolutions on EU issues have to be voted on in the plenary in Germany, Poland

and the UK, while this responsibility is delegated to the committees in Austria, France

Finland and Spain. And while we do find the highest number of debates in Germany and the

UK, the Austrian Nationalrat and the Finnish Eduskunta are again counter examples.

In the following, we therefore present the data for the remaining variables that will be

tested in the quantitative analysis.

19

Independent Variables

Institutional Strength in EU affairs: To test the hypothesis on the institutional strength in EU

affairs (H1), we draw on the OPAL score of institutional strength (Auel et al. 2014a), which

measures parliamentary strength in EU affairs along three dimensions: access to information,

the parliamentary infrastructure and oversight powers. Since we are especially interested in

the trade-off between parliamentary influence and communication, we use the scores for

oversight powers only.

Coalition disagreement: Inspired by Winzen (2013: 310), we calculated the standard

deviation of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) 2010 scores8 for the position on EU

integration for the governing parties (Bakker et al. 2012).

Share of Anti-EU parties in parliament: To measure the strength of anti-EU parties within

parliaments, we calculated the seat share of all Eurosceptic parties for each parliament based

on the Chapel Hill 2010 data set.9

Public Euroscepticism: To test for public Euroscepticism, we draw on Eurobarometer data

that measures the percentage of citizens stating that they ‘do not trust the EU’ per year

(annual average of the Eurobarometer Surveys 73-8010

).

Salience: Unfortunately, the salience of EU issues or EU integration in public opinion is

difficult to measure. We therefore used the trend in turnout across the elections of 2009 and

2014 as a proxy. We are, of course, aware that turnout at EP elections depends on a number

of factors, but very generally it can at least be assumed that, inter alia, turnout can be

interpreted as the percentage of voters for whom the EU is salient enough to take part in the

elections. Whether they do so because they are Eurosceptic or more Europhile is not relevant

for the measure of salience. We use the change in turnout between the elections in 2009 and

2014 to capture whether the salience has increased or decreased over the course of our period

8 The Chapel Hill data is based on expert surveys; respondents were asked to assess ‘the general position on

European integration that the party leadership took over the course of 2010’ on a scale from 1 = strongly

opposed to 7 = strongly in favour. 9 A party was considered as anti-EU if it had a CHES score of 3.5 or below. Missing data (Cyprus, Luxembourg

and Malta, new parties in parliaments after 2010) was added on the basis of information country experts

supplied. 10

The data was retrieved through the Eurobarometer Interactive Search System, online at:

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/cf/index.cfm?lang=en

20

of investigation.11

Table 3 provides an overview over the descriptives for our dependent and

independent variables.

Table 3: Overview Variables

Variables Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

No oral questions/MP .068 .071 0 .31

No written questions/MP .401 .348 .04 1.12

No debates 21.321 12.933 4 51

Duration of debates 43.921 20.789 7.08 80.5

Formal oversight .539 .188 .25 .75

Anti-EU parties 20.83 17.437 0 48.58

Coalition disagreement .665 .598 0 1.87

Public Euroscepticism 54.964 10.314 32 73

Salience 1.056 1.999 -1.06 4.83

Let’s talk Europe – Empirical Analysis

To test the hypotheses developed above, we ran a multiple linear regression analysis using

STATA 13.1. Since our observations are nested within parliaments (four years per

parliament), we used a regression with clustered standard errors (Primo et al. 2007) (Table 4).

Running a regression with such a small number of cases does, of course, mean that the results

have to be interpreted with special care. Thus, we interpret them as broad findings rather than

as precise statistical results.

As the table shows, formal oversight rights of national parliaments do have the expected

impact on the number of questions, but overall our assumptions on weaker parliaments using

communication to compensate for the lack of strong oversight rights could not be confirmed.

11 An alternative measure would have been to use the share of respondents who named the EU among the

greatest problems facing their country in the European Election Study, EES (De Vries 2010). However, given

the wording of the question, this mainly measures salience in terms of negative attitudes. In addition, we would

have had to rely on data from the 2009 EES, and it seem very reasonable to assume that the perception of

respondents has changed substantially in the 2014 elections given the importance of the eurozone crisis in recent

years.

21

Table 4: Regression Results

Variables Oral questions Written

questions

Number of

debates

Duration of

debates

Formal oversight -.163**

(.037)

-.699*

(.220)

7.790

(9.860)

31.928

(13.777)

Public

Euroscepticism

.001

(.001)

.016***

(.002)

.460**

(.090)

-.004

(.249)

Salience .032**

(.008)

.051

(.027)

5.483**

(1.246)

5.879**

(.953)

Anti-EU parties .002

(.001)

.010

(.005)

.801**

(.167)

-.014

(.263)

Coalition dissent -.086*

(.035)

-.167

(.164)

-14.936*

(5.018)

10.604

(6.687)

Constant .057

(.015)

-.303

(.203)

-20.692

(11.959)

15.666

(11.896)

F (5, 6) 13.58 79.18 40.52 66.68

PROB > F .003 .000 .000 .000

R2 .673 .504 .692 .617

Notes: Entries are coefficients with standard errors adjusted for 7 country clusters in parentheses. N = 28, * p <

.05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.

The fact that strong formal oversight rights decrease the number of questions can possibly

be explained with the fact that MPs have other means to obtain information from the

government. More importantly, although not significant at the 95% level, strong oversight

rights actually increase both, the number and the duration of debates. Thus, although strong

parliaments may try to influence the government behind (closed) committee doors, there is no

indication that this comes at the expense of public debates in the plenary. The two most

prominent examples here are the German Bundestag, the Austrian Nationalrat and the Finnish

Eduskunta, all parliaments with very strong oversight powers and active debaters at the same

time. This is an interesting result that contradicts findings from periods before 2010. Auel and

Raunio, for example, have found hardly any plenary debates in the Eduskunta between 2002

and 2010 and had to conclude that due to

‘the limited role of plenary debates in European matters, citizens and the media have –

beyond access to documents – hardly any possibilities to follow parliamentary activities

in EU affairs. … This does suggest that strong parliamentary influence and a system

geared towards mandating the government’s negotiating position may come at a cost

regarding transparency’ (Auel and Raunio 2014c: 24).

The same is true for the Austrian Nationalrat, where Bergman et al. (2003) found an only

‘weak’ involvement of the plenary in EU affairs. Although our data does not allow a

22

comparison with parliamentary communication activities before 2010, there are clear

indications that the eurozone crisis has had a decisive impact on debating patterns in these

parliaments. Figure 2 provides the absolute number of debates by EURlex classification (for

an overview see Table A1 in the appendix), to which we added two categories, 22 for debates

on government declarations covering a multitude of different EU topics, and 23 for debates

on domestic provisions for EU politics. The greater debating activity in the Austrian

Nationalrat, the Finnish Eduskunta and the German Bundestag can be traced back to the very

large number of debates concerning the European Monetary Union (EMU, 10) (see also Auel

and Höing 2014) and, in the German case, to debates on Common Foreign and Security

Policy (18) issues. In the UK, in contrast, EU debates were dominated by the potential future

referendum on the UK’s EU membership as well as the European Union Act of 2011.

Figure 2: Number of Parliamentary Debates by Topic

Given the importance of the crisis it is hardly surprising that parliamentary communication

was also clearly a reaction to public opinion. While Euroscepticism as such plays a weaker

role (a finding that is supported by Auel et al. forthcoming for all 27 chambers of the EU), it

is mainly the salience of the EU that provides an incentive for parliaments to go public. Thus,

where the EU is a salient topic – even if the public is less sceptical of EU integration –

parliaments felt compelled to communicate EU issues – possibly precisely to avoid a (further)

increase in Euroscepticism.

While the above shows that parliamentary actors are responsive to public opinion when it

comes to communicating EU issues, opposition to EU integration within parliament, in

23

contrast, rather leads to a de-politicisation of EU issues: Different positions within coalitions

on European integration decrease both the number of oral questions and, especially, plenary

debates. Thus, while coalition governments may provide incentives to ‘police the bargain’,

the results do confirm our expectation that coalition partners that disagree over EU issues try

to avoid airing out their differences in the plenary. This is also only partly compensated by

anti-EU parties: A stronger presence of anti-EU parties only leads to an increase of debates.

Although we are not yet able to analyse activities at a party level, the results do not suggest

that anti-EU parties make significantly greater use of parliamentary questions than

mainstream parties. This is an unexpected and surprising result that clearly merits further

investigation.

To sum up our results so far, communication of EU politics still plays a minor role in

national parliaments. While only little over 7 per cent of debating time was spent on EU

issues on average, the percentages for oral and written questions did not even reach 2 per

cent. This does, of course, raise the question of how much communication on EU matters can

actually be expected, given the multitude of domestic issues parliaments also have to

communicate. And how much communication is needed for national parliaments to be able to

serve as a channel between the EU and the citizens and thus to contribute to legitimising EU

politics? While it is fairly easy to be disappointed by the results, a comparison with earlier

studies does suggest that parliaments have reacted to the increased salience of the EU over

the last years and have gotten better at fulfilling their communication function - at least in

the plenaries. Yet the problem is that it is impossible to define a clear empirical – or

normative – threshold for ‘enough’ communication12, so the question whether parliaments

have reached that threshold yet (or how far they are away from it) has to remain open, at least

for now. What we can investigate a bit further, however, is the question of whether the

existing communication efforts by national parliaments already have a legitimising impact, a

question we turn to in the next section.

12 One possibility would be to use the legislative Europeanisation as a yardstick: Studies have shown that a fairly

large part of domestic legislation is indeed Europeanised today, ranging from less than 8% in the areas of

defence, housing or social welfare to over 30% in agriculture or environmental policy (based on data from 1987

to 2005; König and Mäder 2012: 224). Depending on the operationalisation of ‘Europeanisation’ and ‘domestic

law’, other authors observe even a greater share of Europeanised legislation (for a discussion of different studies

see Töller 2012). Based on these numbers, one would expect a far higher share of EU communication activities.

However, as the mere percentages tell us little about the extent and importance of EU impulses, this approach

does not seem very helpful.

24

Legitimising Communication or Words in the Wind: Does it all matter?

To investigate whether the communication efforts of the seven parliaments did have a

legitimising effect, we analyse whether they had an impact on their citizens’ views on

democratic representation or, more precisely, on how much citizens trust their parliament and

how satisfied they are with democracy at the national and EU level.

Rational Choice institutionalism assumes trust in political institutions to be a rational

decision (Coleman: 1990: 99ff, see also Hardin 2002). In agency theory terms, a principal is

expected to trust her agent the more she perceives him to work in her interests instead of his

own. Trust thus depends on the principals’ assessment of their agents’ performance, a notion

that is closely connected to Easton’s concept of ‘specific support’ (Easton 1975). From this

perspective, parliamentary communication seems important in two ways: First,

communication is one of the fundamental parliamentary functions and thus vital to their

performance. Citizens not only expect parliaments to ‘make’ laws, they also need to hear

about the policy-making process. More importantly, citizens as principals are usually not able

to observe and thus assess the performance of political institutions including parliaments

directly (see also below). They therefore have to rely on indirect information including, inter

alia, parliamentary accounts of their performance, i.e. on parliamentary ‘reporting’ (Kiewiet

and McCubbins 1991, Strøm 2000: 271). We therefore investigated whether we can find a

relationship between the level of parliamentary communication and the level of citizens’ trust

in their parliaments. In addition,

‘it may be argued that no set of incumbent authorities ... could for long assume the

responsibilities of making and implementing day-to-day decisions in a political system

except under conditions of trust [by means of] some diffuse support’ (Easton 1975:

447f., emphasis by the authors)

We take the notion of diffuse support into account by looking at the levels of satisfaction

with the way democracy works at the national and the EU level (Zmerli and Newton 2008:

711). For both aspects of support we draw on Eurobarometer data for 2010 to 2013.13 Given

13 Data for questions: ‘For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to

trust it: the [national] parliament?’; ‘On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or

not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in (your country)?’; ‘On the whole, are you very satisfied,

fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in the European Unions?

Data was retrieved through the interactive search system and, where necessary, complemented with data from

the standard Eurobarometer Surveys 73 to 80.

25

that the share of quantitative on EU issues is less than 2 per cent out of all both oral and

written questions, we focus the analysis on plenary debates only.

Table 5: Parliamentary Communication, Trust and Satisfaction with Democracy

Do you trust your national parliament?

Are you satisfied with how democracy works in ‘our

country’?

Are you satisfied with how democracy works in

in the EU?

Yes No

Trend no

yes no Trend

no yes no

Trend no

no of debates EU .319 -.326 -.710** .386

* -.395

* -.556

** -.141 .230 -.443

*

Hours spent on EU debates

.479** -.454

* -.631

** .472

* -.521

** -.778

*** .026 .065 -.691

***

% of plenary time spent on EU issues

.812***

-.786***

-.665***

.707***

-.676***

-.570** .146 .309 -.555

**

As the table shows, we can find a rather strong relationship between parliamentary

debating activity and citizens’ attitudes. The longer the hours spent on the floor of the house

and the greater the overall share of plenary time spent on EU issues, the greater the

percentage of citizens who trust their national parliament. We also find a very strong

relationship with distrust in the national parliament. The greater the debating activity, the

lower the number of citizens who distrust their parliament. Finally, where parliaments debate

EU issues more frequently, distrust declined over the last four years. We also find very

similar patterns regarding the general satisfaction of citizens’ with how democracy works in

their own country. Again, the higher the level of debating activity, the higher the level of

satisfaction, the lower the level of dissatisfaction and the greater the decline in dissatisfaction

over the last four years. Things are very different however, when we look at the satisfaction

of citizens with the way democracy works in the EU. Here, the number of debates actually

has a negative impact on the level of satisfaction, while the impact of the other two measures

is positive, but not significant. The reverse is true for levels of distrust, but again the

correlations are not significant. This seems to suggest that frequent debates on EU issues had,

in fact, no legitimising effect for the EU. One reason could be that many of the debates

revolved around domestic contributions to solving the severe financial and economic

problems faced by other member states (especially Greece, Ireland and Portugal) as well as

the EU a whole.14

14 This is also mostly true for Spain. Spain received financial assistance through the ESM only from late 2012

onwards.

26

We are aware, of course, that trust in national parliaments or the satisfaction with

democracy depends on a number of, mainly domestic, factors (van der Meer and Dekker

2011) such as economic performance (McAllister 1999; Bovens and Wille 2008). However,

given the importance of EU issues both for national politics as well as public opinion over the

last four years due to the eurozone crisis (Kriesi and Grande, 2012: 2; Zürn 2013), they are

likely to have had an impact as well. ‘[C]risis-related decisions like those to provide financial

support to Greece or measures like the European stability mechanism or the Fiscal Compact

have caused wide debate and media attention, and have resulted in public protest in many

Member States’ (Miklin 2014b: 3). The last few years have even seen a number of

governments fall over issues related to the crisis and thus at least indirectly to the EU – a so

far unprecedented phenomenon. Against this background – and given the rather strong

correlations in table 5 above – it does seem plausible to assume that parliamentary activities

in, and parliamentary communication of, EU issues did play at least some role with regard to

citizens’ views.

Conclusion

The starting point of this paper was the normative expectation that national parliaments

can and should contribute to the democratic legitimacy in and of the EU by communicating

EU affairs to the citizens. The aim was therefore to investigate whether they actually fulfil

this task and why (not).

Public communication of MPs and their parliamentary party groups as defined in this

paper follows the logic of political contestation, and we distinguished between electoral and

institutional incentives for communication. Regarding the former, our data reveals that

political contestation in public opinion has a positive impact on communication of EU affairs.

In other words, the ‘constraining dissensus’ becomes a ‘facilitating dissensus’. Political

contestation within parliament, however, has less of a clear influence: The presence and

strength of Anti-EU parties does surprisingly not seem to be decisive, while disagreement

between the governing parties is clearly hampering communication of EU affairs.

Interestingly, institutional incentives also seem to play less of a role for parliamentary

communication efforts in EU affairs. The most common factors neither enable nor constrain

communication. We can also not confirm that strong formal oversight rights in EU affairs

come at the expense of parliamentary communication. This finding, that contradicts the

27

results of studies focussing on earlier periods (Auel and Rittberger 2006, Auel and Raunio

2014c), however, could very well be to be due to the fact that our period under investigation

covers the most turbulent time of the eurozone crisis.

But do MPs and their parliamentary party groups actually communicate enough to fulfil

their communication function in EU affairs? It is impossible to quantify a meaningful

threshold of ‘enough’ parliamentary communication – not only in EU affairs. We therefore

analysed whether existing communication efforts had a legitimising effect. Our data shows

that parliamentary debates and trust in national parliaments are strongly correlated, and the

same is true for satisfaction with domestic democracy. In turn, a lower level of debating

activity comes with greater distrust and dissatisfaction. Parliaments that more frequently ‘talk

Europe’, do seem to reach their citizens – those that do not will have to do better.

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Appendix

Table A1: Eurlex Classification of policy topics

Categories

1 = General, financial and institutional matters of the EU

2 = Customs Union and free movement of goods

3 = Agriculture

4 = Fisheries

5 = Freedom of movement for workers and social policy

6 = Right of establishment and freedom to provide services

7 = Transport policy

8 = Competition policy

9 = Taxation

10 = Economic and monetary policy / financial and debt crisis

11 = External relations of the EU with other

12 = Energy

13 = Industrial policy and internal market

14 = Regional policy and coordination of structural instruments

15 = Environment, consumers and health protection

16 = Science, information, education and culture

17 = Law relating to undertakings

18 = Common Foreign and Security Policy

19 = Area of freedom, security and justice

20 = People’s Europe

22 = General EU debate covering multitude of topics

23 = domestic provisions regarding EU

Source: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/RECH_repertoire.do with additional items (22, 23) added by the authors.