Contents:

3.1. Formal organisational structures
3.2. Processes and procedures
3.3. Culture

Contents:

2.1. What was the european commission aiming for?
2.2. What was implemented?

3.1. Organisational dimension
3.2. Political dimension
3.3. Democratic dimension

Abstract

This paper analyses how voting behaviour in the European Parliament has changed after the enlargement of the EU to 10 new member states in 2004.
Using roll-call votes from the first eighteen months of the sixth European Parliament (between July 2004 and December 2005), the authors compare the voting behaviour of MEPs in this parliament with their behaviour in the previous Parliament (between 1999 and 2004). They focus on party cohesion, coalition formation between parties, and ‘spatial maps’ of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). They find stable levels of party cohesion. Coalitions in the European Parliament form mainly around the left-right dimension and ideological distance between parties is the strongest predictor of coalition preferences. Overall they find that EU enlargement has not changed the way politics works inside the European Parliament. The only major exception is in the behaviour of the Liberals, who vote more with the EPP-ED and less with the Socialists than they did in the previous Parliament.

Abstract

Scholars of the State have demonstrated that senior officials’ ability to embody the general interest is the result of long-term social processes marked by the concomitant construction of the State and civil servants as a social group. The situation of European civil servants is different from that of State civil servants; their ability to maintain their central role and defend the European interest invites us to turn our enquiry to the processes that realize them (in the double sense of Berger and Luckman). They are a group whose objectification has strong foundations and is also rooted in European institutional “realities”. One of the aspects of this process may be is analysed by focusing on the unions of European civil servants. By examining the social process of crossed unification between the cause, the interest, and the group led by European civil servants unions, this sociological based approached aims to clarify the relation which unites Eurocrats as a body with the European Union institutions.

Evaluating the entrance of new member states in a representative institution

Contents:

The Quest for Legitimacy
The Commission as a Political Organization
Knowledge as a Source of Legitimation in the Migration Policy Community
A Contested Policy Area

Mandate and Structure of the European Migration Network
Research Agenda and Research Utilization
Dissemination and Publicity

Examining the adaptation of Polish Members of the European Parliament and their impact on political life of the chamber

This paper looks at other aspects of the process of socialisation/adaptation than the attitude of the MEPs towards Europe. It presents MEPs’ own accounts of the processes of learning certain parliamentary strategies specific for the EP, their views on political groups and on representing European citizens. The data analysed comes from interviews with Polish MEPs, carried out between October 2005 and January 2006.
The impact of the arrival of MEPs from CEE on parliamentary politics is assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, the efforts of Polish MEPs to influence parliamentary debates on historical issues are described. The paper also attempts to examine how the arrival of new MEPs (from CEE, not only Poland) influenced the numerical balance of power between political groups and their cohesion.
The paper is divided into four sections. First, previous research on relevant issues is briefly reviewed. It is followed by some background information concerning Polish political parties present in the EP. Third section reviews different aspects of the accommodation process of freshmen MEPs, while the fourth one assesses the effect that their presence has had so far on parliamentary politics and the cohesion of political groups.