Over the last four years, the debate about the necessity to revise EU treaties has intensified due to several external shocks and EU internal developments. Yet, the factors influencing support or opposition to treaty change remain unexplored. Moreover, while skeptical national leaders usually say that citizens do not want treaty reforms, European public opinion surveys and empirical studies show that citizens actually opt for more integration in various policy areas, especially in defence and foreign policy, reject the Commission’s exclusive right of legislative initiative and prefer majority voting over unanimity – all of which requires revision of EU primary law.
In this paper, Karolina Boronska-Hryniewiecka and Jan Kotýnek Krotký explore the underlying dynamics behind the support or opposition to EU treaty change in the European Parliament identifying several parliamentary discursive positions along with their motivations.
The findings reveal a nuanced character of political preferences on EU treaty revisions pointing to an increasingly transnational character of political cleavages in the EU. They also invite further research on the current dynamics of the broader transnational debate on the EU’s institutional reform, beyond treaty changes, in order to explain patterns of its politicisation, (re)contextualisation and (de) legitimisation vis-à-vis EU citizens.
Our speaker, Karolina Boronska-Hryniewiecka, is a Visiting Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance, Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Science and Jean Monnet Chair of the University of Wroclaw and associate research fellow at the Centre européen de sociologie et science politique (CESSP) of the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her latest co-edited book explores synergies and legitimacy clashes of the parliamentary dimension of the Conference on the Future of Europe.