Ep(ic) fail? The European Parliament’s Influence in the Ordinary Legislative Procedure

Sammanfattning: When the Lisbon treaty entered into force in 2009 it marked the peak of a long period of institutional empowerment of the European Parliament (EP). In formal terms, the EP and the Council of the European Union (Council) now have equal power in most policy areas. Despite the remarkable transformation of the EP, its role in EU legislation remains understudied. This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the EP’s role in the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP). It assesses whether the EP’s formal power is reflected in its de facto influence based on two criteria; 1) it should not be less influential than the Council, and 2) its influence should not be limited in substantive terms. Empirically, it covers 4,662 amendments proposed in the early negotiation phase of 30 randomly selected legislative acts. First, by conducting a one-sample t-test, it demonstrates that despite formal empowerment the parliament is still significantly less influential than the Council in EU legislation. Second, using binary logistic regression, it shows that EP’s influence is limited in substantive terms. The more extensive amendments the EP is attempting to introduce – the less influence it has. In addition to contributing to empirical research on the parliament’s role in EU legislation this thesis introduces a new way of quantitatively measuring legislative influence at the EU level. By creating a dataset comparing the institutions’ negotiation mandates with legislative outcomes, a more precise measurement of the institutions’ influence is provided.