Talking about Europe? Explaining the salience of the European Union in the plenaries of 17 national parliaments during 2006–2019
| Author | Felix Lehmann |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165221143962 |
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Talking about Europe?
Explaining the salience of
the European Union in the
plenaries of 17 national
parliaments during
2006–2019
Felix Lehmann
Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract
To provide accountability, Members of Parliament (MPs) are expected to publicly com-
municate European Union (EU) affairs. Yet, parliamentary communication of EU affairs
remains underexplored and existing analyses are conflicting. Against this background,
this article sheds light on what drives MPs to talk about the EU, utilizing a novel dataset
based on over 20,000 plenary protocols from 17 parliaments during 2006–2019. The
study highlights that EU mentions increase in connection to referendums, summits,
treaty ratifications, and European elections. Additional drivers include transfers of
authority to the EU level, EU legislation, and political incentives. The findings provide
some nuance to more pessimistic evaluations of the EU’s accountability deficit, but
major legitimacy challenges remain concerning national elections and Eurozone
integration.
Keywords
Accountability, European Union, national parliaments, plenary debate, salience
Corresponding author:
Felix Lehmann, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sprängkullsgatan 19, 41123
Gothenburg, Sweden.
Email: felix.lehmann@gu.se
Article
European Union Politics
2023, Vol. 24(2) 370–389
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165221143962
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Introduction
National parliaments (NPs) are vital contributors to the democratic legitimacy of the
European Union (EU). In EU affairs, their democratic functions include holding their
governments accountable through parliamentary oversight and debate while providing
a deliberative forum to connect citizens to the EU. Some scholars have thus argued
that weak NPs contribute to the EU’s democratic deficit (Follesdal and Hix, 2006).
While the formerly dubbed “losers”(Maurer and Wessels, 2001) or “victims”
(O’Brennan and Raunio, 2007) of European integration have long started to “fight
back”(Raunio and Hix, 2000) by actively engaging in EU affairs (Auel et al., 2015),
the Eurozone crisis and the emergence of executive dominance have posed new legitim-
acy challenges (Puntscher Riekmann and Wydra, 2013; Sánchez-Cuenca, 2017).
Particularly in the increasingly politicized and crisis-ridden EU, it is paramount that
NPs “take ownership”(Auel and Höing, 2015) of EU decision-making to legitimize it
domestically.
In modern democracies, parliaments fulfill several key functions, such as exerting
influence on policymaking, electing the government, and oversight (Auel et al., 2015:
284). However, in EU affairs, NPs retain little direct policy influence, governments are
rarely chosen based on their EU positions, and oversight is toothless if scrutinized
decision-makers are not publicly held accountable for their actions. This leaves a key
role for parliamentary communication as an indispensable tool for NPs to facilitate
public accountability. The communicative function not only serves to hold governments
accountable and for Members of Parliament (MPs) to “give account”(Bovens, 2007) of
their EU stances. It also allows NPs to serve as a forum for public deliberation, present
political alternatives, inform citizens about key developments, foster a connection to the
EU project, and provide an outlet for grievances (Raunio, 2011: 306). By utilizing their
communicative function, parliaments provide an essential prerequisite for public account-
ability in EU affairs, enabling citizens to form preferences on European integration and
vote accordingly.
Previous studies on the drivers of parliamentary communication of EU affairs have
been either limited in scope and country sample or confined to analyzing pre-Eurozone
and refugee crisis trends. Besides, studies often display conflicting findings. Whereas
Auel and Raunio (2014) conclude that public Euroscepticism and strong political conflict
stifle debate on the EU, Auel et al. (2016) partly contradict this by asserting that strong
parliamentary oversight institutions, high public Euroscepticism, and high salience of the
EU in public opinion are conducive to EU debate. Conversely, Hoerner (2019) finds no
significant effect of oversight institutions on the salience of EU policy evaluation, main-
taining that public Euroscepticism only encourages Eurosceptic parties to communicate
EU affairs. In contrast, Rauh and de Wilde (2018) conclude that plenary debate on the EU
is dominated by government parties and diminishes in response to increasing domestic
Euroscepticism and before national elections. While this gaping “opposition deficit”in
EU affairs paints a bleak picture of public accountability, they do find that MPs increase
EU debate in response to authority transfers to the EU level, authority exercise at the EU
level, important events, and increases in internal party dissent. Contesting these findings,
Lehmann 371
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