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Assessing MEP Influence on British EC Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Stafford T. Thomas
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THERE ARE 518 MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT(MEPs). Each of the twelve member states of the EuropeanCommunity (EC) has a specific number of MEPs, based onpopulation. As one of the larger member states, the UnitedKingdom, along with France, Germany, and Italy, has 81repre sent at ives.

European Parliament (EP) elections are held every five yearsfor a fixed term. The Parliament is organized into blocs ofrepresentatives, which, in the traditional manner of multi-partyparliaments, span the ideological spectrum from left to right.There are continual adjustments in these coalitions, but generallythe 5 18 MEPs are divided into approximately ten groupings. The EP holds its plenary sessions in Strasbourg, and itsSecretariat is in Luxembourg. However, most of its substantivedeliberations are done by committees, which hold their sessions inBrussels. This, together with the ease of commuting andinherently greater appeal of Brussels, has made the Belgiancapital the usual reference point for the European Parliament,although the EP continues to have something akin to ageographical split personality.

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Government and Opposition , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1992, pp. 3 - 18
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1992

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References

1 Europe, Our Future: The Institutions of the European Community, Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1990, pp. 3–6 and 15.

2 Personal interview with Glyn Ford, UK European Parliament headquarters, 31 October 1990.

3 Personal interview with Nick Sigler, Senior Rearch Officer, Labour Party Headquarters, 6 November 1990.

4 Figures for European Parliament elections are from Clark, George, Your Parliament in Europe: The European Parliament 1979–1989, London, UK Information Office of the European Parliament, 1989, p. 12 Google Scholar. Figures for UK General Elections are from Norton, Philip, The British Polity, 2nd ed., New York, Longman Publishing Group, 1991, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

5 Personal interview with Sir Christopher Prout, Chairman of the European Democratic Group, UK European Parliament Headquarters, 1 November 1990.

6 An article in The Times, London, 4 December 1989, p. 5, cites a Gallup poll which concludes that 85 per cent of the British electorate could not name their MEP.

7 ‘The EDG has become a fairly cohesive group, … [but] until the British electorate takes a greater interest in European affairs MEPs are unlikely to play an important part in the activities of their [parliamentary] party’. Ingle, Stephen, The British Party System, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, p. 61.Google Scholar

8 ‘Since the general election defeat [of 1987] the NEC has decisively reasserted its power to overrule constituency selections [for Commons candidates]… A panel with five representatives each from the NEC and the constituency party is given the task of drawing up a short list, which may indeed be of only one’, ibid., p. 142. Note that this pertains to by-elections, pending the forthcoming general election.

9 ‘Within the Conservative Party, aspiring candidates have to be on a candidates list maintained by the party’s national headquarters’. (P. Norton, The British Polity, op. cit, p. 101.)

10 ‘The [Commons] campaign is fought in practice on a national level between the two main parties, the candidates and the local campaigns serving to reinforce the national campaigns of their leaders’, ibid., p. 95

11 Personal interviews with Glyn Ford and Sir Christopher Prout.

12 Personal interview with Nick Sigler.

13 ‘The position of the NEC in policy matters is quite simply pivotal—hence the perennial struggle between left and right to secure domination’, Ingle, op. cit., p. 58.

14 ‘…Responsibility for policy-making between conferences belongs officially with the NEC, but when Labour is in government it rests with the Labour Cabinet’. ( Sawyer, Tom, ‘After the Policy Review’, Labour Party News, 07/08 1989, No. 16, p. 7.Google Scholar)

15 Kaplan, Morton, System and Process in International Politics, New York, John Wiley, 1962.Google Scholar

16 Personal interview with William Cash, Chairman of the Conservative European Affairs Backbench Committee, House of Commons, 14 November 1990.

17 ‘The kinds of problems facing British governments of the future are likely to be less conducive to adversarial combat… [because] the growth of legislation emanating from the European Parliament that requires close scrutiny will probably increase substantially’. Ingle, op cit., p. 240.

18 ibid.

19 Personal interview with Sir Christopher Prout.

20 ibid.

21 ’The British Labour movement has seen the EC as intrinsically antagonistic to its socialist values and objectives… For Labour, international and, a fortiori, supranational decision-making in the Community obstructed its established field of action—national politics; and impaired the powers of Parliament, always seen as the appropriate arena for carrying out Labour’s policies’. ( Grahl, John and Teague, Paul, ‘The British Labour Party and the European Community’, The Political Quarterly, 01–03 1987, p. 72.Google Scholar)

22 Tribune, 20 July 1990, p. 6.

23 In the July/August 1989 issue.

24 House of Commons Debates, 6 November 1990, col. 60.

25 Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Foreign Affairs Committee, p. 50.

26 ibid.

27 The Times, London, 21 September 1988, p. 7.

28 17 November 1989, p. 2a.

29 Personal interviews, 31 October 1990 and 1 November 1990, respectively.

30 ‘The election result… is the first clear repudiation of 10 years of Thatcherism, and… it is also an endorsement of Labour’s more positive approach to the EC, and its attitude towards the social dimension of the internal market’. (‘We Can Open a Second Front in Europe’, Tribune, 23 June 1989, p. 1.

31 Richard Owen argued in 1988 that ‘No one ever lost votes in Britain by being anti-EEC’, and that Mrs Thatcher’s primary motive in emphasizing Britain’s sovereignty was to affect British voters. (The Times, 23 Sept. 1988, p. 7.)

32 ‘Leading Europe into the 1990s’, London, Conservative Central Office, 1989, p. 8.

33 ‘Sovereignty and Interdependence: Britain’s Place in the World’, International Affairs, April 1990, p. 687.

34 House of Commons Debates, 11 June 1990, col. 71.

35 House of Commons Debates, 30 October 1990, col. 881.

36 House of Commons Debates, 18 May 1989, col. 505.

37 House of Commons Debates, 28 June 1990, col. 644.