The voting behaviour of the European Parliament members and the problem of the Europarties

Abstract The members of the European Parliament are elected in nationally organized and domestically oriented polls; however, in the Strasbourg Assembly they form transnational Party Groups or Europarties. The Rules of Procedure require such formations for the functioning of the Assembly, but Party Groups are much more than procedure requisites. They assemble elected representatives of national parties which share a consistent similarity in political ideologies and strategies. Party integration is a decisive development in the unification process of the Western European countries and it is expected to come from the Party Groups experience. The paper analyses such an issue by examining roll-call votes. Data include a systematic sample of votes cast during the first and second elected Parliament. The research looks into two fundamental items: (a) Party Group cohesion (an index of agreement is used to measure it); (b) voting line-ups of Party Groups. The aim is to point out the most important political cleavages and issues of the Community political system.