Pursuing Statehood Beyond State Borders? Exploring How Secessionist MEPs Enact their Agendas in the European Parliament

This paper explores the behavior of secessionist MEPs in the European Parliament and thereby seeks to better understand how European integration has affected secessionist political parties. Contrary to expectations, European integration seems to have sustained, rather than eradicated, the quest for independence in the EU by pro-European secessionist parties, which is effectively challenging the status quo and political organization of the EU. Secessionist parties have also been eager to use channels with access to European policy-making, despite there being little formal room to address independence. Hence, there is a need to better understand how and to what extent European integration plays a role in shaping secessionist party strategies. Previous research has so far overwhelmingly focused on the Europeanization of secessionist parties at the national level, even though mobilization in the European Parliament has been a consistent component of their strategy as well. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how and to what extent it is used as an international forum to promote secessionist interests and visions of independence in the EU. This study hopes to break new ground by offering a systematic comparative analysis of how secessionist parties have been making use of the European Parliament and draws on new data from the last twenty years. In particular, the paper explores how pro-European secessionist MEPs have balanced their interests in the European Parliament between 1999 and 2019 and to what extent they have Europeanized their separatist agenda by taking it to the supranational level. The paper draws on a quantitative content analysis of the plenary debate contributions, explanations of vote, written and oral questions and committee choices of three different pro-European secessionist parties (CiU, N-VA and SNP) in the European Parliament.