The role of the European Parliament's intergroups in the representation of territorial interests

Abstract

Intergroups are semi-official forums where Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from different political groups can cultivate their interests in particular political topics such as ‘Youth Issues’, ‘Social Economy’, ‘Regional Issues’ or ‘Minorities’. Despite their non-legal status, the Intergroups are often taken into account and referred to by parliamentarians, and they are regulated by the leadership of the European Parliament.

In the European Parliament, territorial issues are not only on the agenda of plenary, parliamentary committees, and political group meetings, but are also discussed in the so-called' semi-formal' groups of MEPs, the intergroups that provide fora for channelling territorial interests into European Parliament decision-making.

The aim of this paper is to discuss whether semi-official groups of MEPs are able to channel territory-focused interests into EP decision-making. According to my hypothesis, these semi-official forums of the European Parliament can properly exploit the capabilities inherent in semiformal operations and therefore effectively participate in the representation of territorial interests.

The study is divided into four parts. The first part will provide an overview of the relationship between the EP and territorial interests. The second part presents the characteristics and structure of intergroups. In addition, the interest representation capacity of these intergroups will be analysed, especially in light of the EP's Rules of Procedure. In the third part of this paper, the operational characteristics of the territory focused intergroups will be presented. The last chapter presents the interest representation practice of the territory focused intergroups, based on specific case studies.

Based on the document analysis, structured in-depth interviews with MEPs and intergroup’s coordinators and the case study, it can be concluded that these semi-formal groups of MEPs (can) play a key role in the representation of territorial interests. At the same time, due to the limitations set out in the EP's Rules of Procedure, intergroups can only indirectly participate in the channelling of territorial interests into parliamentary decision-making, since parliamentary actions are not carried out on behalf of the intergroups, but on behalf of the MEPs participating in their work. Nevertheless, when evaluating the activities of these representative groupings, we cannot ignore the fact that, given the complexity of EU decision-making, most of the time, not only EP intergroups, but also other EU institutions, international organizations and national bodies act on a given issue.