The European Parliament Facing Contemporary Challenges

Abstract

By calling on the European parties to establish 'Spitzenkandidaturen' (Lead Candidates) for the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections and by managing to enforce the claim of the winning Candidate’s claim to the Commission Presidency, the EP pushed its competences regarding the Commission's investiture far beyond the wording of the treaties. One paper examines whether this push is symptomatic of the EP or not and what we may expect to be the impact of this bold step. The second paper examines how national parties draw their lists for European elections. The goal is to investigate how national political parties hold sway over their MEPs. It seeks to study actual processes of selection empirically. The third and final paper turns to differentiation. This paper argues that European economic governance is weakened by unchecked differentiation in particular regarding the evaluation of policies related to EMU. Special attention is placed on the policy evaluation by the European Parliament in order to examine both policy implementation and the redefinition of inter-institutional relations.

Title	Details
The Role of the European Parliament in Policy Evaluation in a Differentiated Polity	View Paper Details
Informal Institutions in the European Union: The Introduction of 'Spitzenkandidaturen' (Lead Candidates) in the 2014 European Parliament Elections and its Meaning for the Institutional Development of the EU	View Paper Details
Secret Garden or Jungle Out There? Formal and Informal Processes of Candidate Selection for European Elections	View Paper Details