The Impact of UK MEPs on the Work of the European Parliament During the Period of UK Membership of the European Union

At a time when the emphasis is all on the UK leaving the European Union this paper aims at providing an initial assessment of the impact of UK MEPs during the 47 years of UK membership of the European Union. As this paper argues, UK MEPs have sometimes adopted a negative stance to the work of the Parliament but far more often have played key and positive roles in its day-to-day work., holding many of its key posts and influencing its policy positions and working structures In formal leadership terms UK MEPs have provided one President of the European Parliament(Henry Plumb), 12 political group leaders in 5 separate political groups, as well as numerous Parliament Vice Presidents and Quaestors. In Parliament’s powerful committees they have also played a key role, providing no less than 32 Committee chairs between 1979 and 2020, , a large number of committee coordinators, as well as innumerable rapporteurs and draftsmen. They have provided many heads of Parliamentary delegations (notably to the US) and no less than 3 of the 8 Co-Presidents of the ACP Parliamentary Assembly. UK MEPs have been in key positions during some of the important moments in the Parliament’s history, such as when Alan Donnelly was Parliament’s general rapporteur in the EP’s Temporary Committee on German Unification and when Pauline Green was the leader of the Socialist Group at the time of the fall of the Santer Commission. .UK MEPs have also shaped the working structures of the Parliament in areas such as the introduction of question time in plenary and even in certain committees as well as in the periodic (and often political rather than just technical) revisions of Parliament’s Rules of Procedure. Their influence has been felt.in many policy areas as well, such as in the EP’s work on the budget and above all on budgetary control, on the internal market (where they played a critical role on the shaping of the 1992 internal market programme) and more intangibly, but equally importantly, in nudging the Parliament towards devoting more time to policy implementation as well as to policy formulation. The often forthright debating style of UK MEPs has also stood out in the Parliament. This paper does also, however, look at the other side of UK membership of the EU , namely its divisive impact, the non-participation of Labour MEPs in the first years of UK membership and the divisions among Labour MEPs in the early 1980s, the subsequent slow rise of Euroscepticism among certain Conservative MEPs and above all the impacts of UKIP and the Brexit Party as well as of Nigel Farage. The paper is based on several strands, my 37 years of work on the European Parliament staff, my participation as a co-author of 9 successive editions of a classic text book on the European Parliament as well as my more recent participation in an oral interview project with former MEPs, in which over 20 former UK MEPs outlined their own views and experiences.