Voting green, or not: what drives members of the European Parliament opposition to agri-environmental reform?

Substantive agri-environmental policy change has not materialized within EU agri-food governance despite emerging scientific consensus on the need for food system transformation. Agri-environmental legislative proposals often face strong resistance, resulting in their weakening or reversal. Although the challenges to adopting agri-environmental legislations are clear, existing analytical tools fall short in explaining why legislative rollbacks occur. This study addresses this gap by drawing on Rational Choice Theory to examine how individual-level motivations linked to the agri-food sector influence members of the European Parliament (MEP) voting behaviour on agri-environmental legislation. Roll-call vote data and a binomial generalized linear mixed model are used to test office-seeking, policy-seeking and vote-seeking motivations. Our analysis shows that MEPs with private financial interests in the agri-food sector were more likely to vote against environmental protection across the studied agri-environmental legislations, while MEPs with stronger environmental ideological affinity were more likely to support such measures. Institutional variables, mainly political group affiliation and COMAGRI leadership of legislative files, are also significant determinants of voting behaviour. These findings suggest that individual-level motivations and institutional structures help explain the lack of consistent legislative support for agri-environmental legislations between February 2022 and July 2024. Our findings raise normative questions about the need for stronger transparency and conflict-of-interest measures in EU agricultural governance.