The representative character of the European polity and the role of MEPs therein have been fiercely debated over the past years. Media coverage of legislative amendments, which were based on interest group position papers, highlights that both scientists and the public do not know enough about which interests or objectives MEPs are representing in their legislative behavior. Since Wahlke, Buchanan, Eulau and Ferguson (1962) argued that representatives are not limited to have one focus of representation, it is put forward in this paper that MEPs are expected to have a distribution of foci that can be skewed towards one or more foci. In the context of the EU this means a step beyond the traditional divide of national vs. (European) party representation towards a more nuanced picture including a representative focus on a specific societal segment, a subnational geographical level or the administrative interests of the European institutions. In this paper I will use a content coded, stratified random sample of 'single-sponsored' amendments and their justifications to substantiate the idea of a distribution of foci. These amendments are sampled from a dataset containing all amendments tabled in committee phase in response to a draft report between 2009 and 2014. Furthermore, in this paper individual level characteristics - like status in the parliament, ideological position and several socio-structural characteristics - combined with country level variables - like the electoral system used 'at home' – will be used to explain skewness in the distribution of foci of representation on MEP-level.
