Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTThe problem of the broadening of the European Parliament's powers was one of the main themes of the election campaign in several countries. Interviews carried out in April–May 1979, in the nine countries of the Community with a sample of candidates (N = 742, including 62% of those who were elected) reveals, among other things, their attitudes towards the role of the European Parliament during the next five years. The results weighted according to the numbers of seats obtained by each political group, give an image of the individual attitudes of the Members of Parliament which is probably very near to reality.This study focuses on three specific aspects of the possible broadening of the European Parliament's powers, all of which are under current discussion: the power to select and dismiss members of the European Community; the power to elect the president of the Commission; the power to revise all budget proposals.By and large the responses to these three topics by the candidates and members of the European Parliament show the same pattern: those from the original six countries are more supportive of these measures than those of the three new member countries. But there are two striking exceptions: the British delegation stands out as significantly more "pro‐European' than one would expect on the basis of public opinion data; the French delegation shows a suprisingly low level of support for these measures.Examining the attitudes of the major political groups elected to the European Parliament, one finds that the Socialists and the Christian Democrats are the most favorable to the measures (82%) under study; but the cleavage between supporters and opponents does not coincide with the Left/Right dimension: 62% of the Communist candidates, for instance, have declared themselves in favor of these measures, against only 57% of the Liberals.But it would be highly misleading to view the respective cross‐national parliamentary groups as monolithic on such questions; the Communists show the largest Standard deviations on all three questions. On the whole, the differences between parties belonging to the same cross‐national group are larger than the differences between rival parties in the same nation. In other words, the political context of a given nation seems to be a more important influence on the attitudes of its representatives than are their party groupings.Despite such cleavages, a strong majority of the European Parliament seems to support all three measures analyzed here. Moreover, their behavior seems consistent with their attitudes. In December 1979 the Parliament rejected the proposed EC budget. Virtually without exception, those supporting increased budgetary powers voted to reject the current budget.