Voting behaviour in the European Parliament and economic governance reform: does nationality matter?

Open Access

Abstract

This paper analyses MEPs' voting behaviour on all regulations and directives forming the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack together with the key vote required to establish the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Whereas scholarly work has traditionally showed MEPs voting behaviour to be primarily driven by ideology (more specifically, by the MEP's party group affiliation), we expect to find MEPs' national origins to play a counterbalancing role and – at least partially – weaken intra-party position on key economic governance matters, where a conflict of interest might exist between creditor and debtor member countries. Findings confirm that national interests and country-level economic variables can predict MEPs' votes in a considerable number of cases, opening new avenues for future research on territorial cleavages in the European Parliament.