It is a widely shared view that the EP has increased its power enormously in the last two decades and now enjoys considerable legislative, control and budgetary power. For some EU scholars the gradual upgrading of the EP has led to an institutionalization of representative democracy to such an extent that it can already be regarded as a core constitutional principle of the EU. However, the gradual strengthening of the EP stands in stark contrast to the expectations of proponents of New Intergovernmentalism who argue that although member states have transferred more and more competences to the EU they resist strengthening the supranational political. The paper assesses whether the institutional upgrading of the EP can be regarded as an exception to the claims of new intergovernmentalism or whether the EP has accepted the intergovernmental approaches and is far more complicit to the new intergovernmentalism than its supranational rhetoric suggests.
