The European Parliament as the Lynchpin for EU Responsiveness to Protest: A Theoretical Account of the Impact of Protest on Policy-Making in the EU

There is ample empirical evidence by now that in recent decades the issue of Europe has become increasingly politicised, not just on the elite level, for example in the form of party or government communication, but also on the mass level in the form of street level protest (Grande, Hutter, Hoeglinger, Dolezal, Becker). Various recent crises have further contributed to new waves of protests in European streets, whether in member states’ capitals and smaller cities or directly at the gates of the EU institutions in Brussels (Flesher Fominaya, Kriesi). But when Europeans protest, do EU policy-makers listen? In this paper, I argue for a theoretical account of the European Parliament as the lynchpin of EU responsiveness to protest because of its self-conception as the closest link to European citizens and due to its constant underlying power-struggle vis-à-vis the Commission. First, I theorize the inter-institutional dynamics of policy-making in the EU, showing how they are crucial to understanding protest impact in the context of the EU, where different institutions with competing interests are pitted against each other and choose to co-opt the demands of protest movements for their own agenda. Second, I highlight the broader implications of mass politicisation of Europe for policy-making and future European integration alike. I argue that with increasing European integration, ‘Europeanised’ protest as a form of mass politicisation has also increased significantly. Meanwhile, European integration in the past two decades was also accompanied by an increase in the power and importance of the EP within the network of EU institutions. Thus, I argue that if the EP is now the most responsive institution to EU-related protest, this development points to the democratising potential of politicisation, as the politicisation of European integration has led to a strengthened link between citizens and political elites. I conclude with a brief discussion of how this new theoretical account of EU responsiveness to protest could be extended in further research, e.g., on other multi-level governance institutions.