More than any of the institutions of the European Union (EU), it is the European Parliament (EP) that has been most affected by recent social, economic and political uncertainties. This panel analyses the different dimensions of the Parliament’s work in the 2019-2024 session, with each paper focusing on a different dimension of the various challenges that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have faced and are still facing. These include the impact of the new cohort of MEPs on the coalition building and committee work that have been a traditional strength of the legislature, as well as the activities of the parliamentarians in relation to key policy areas such as public health and immigration. Having faced these challenges for a number of years, it is even possible to argue that the 2020s will see a new ‘era of the Parliament’, following on from previous periods when either the Commission or the Council each in turn more overtly dominated EU affairs.

In its scrutiny role the European Parliament (EP) makes wide use of a number of informational resources, some of which are filtered and provided by the European Parliament Research Service (EPRS). These inputs into process of deliberating on the performance of policy financed by the EU budget include ex-post evaluations and, in particular, the special reports (performance audits) conducted by the European Court of Auditors (ECA). Effective scrutiny is fundamental for the throughout legitimacy of the policy-making process. Traditionally the EP’s Budgetary Control Committee (CONT) has scrutinised past expenditure across all policy domains, but very recently the standing committees have taken up a more retrospective perspective, examining how policy has fared. Such insights and learning should help the co-legislator deliver improved regulation and better policy instruments. However, the new legislature (2019-2024) saw one-third of new MEPs brought into the committees, many from populist and nationalist parties and with no necessary prior knowledge of scrutiny processes. This paper explores how new committee members adapt to parliamentary work, raising questions concerning the impact of Euroscepticism on effective committee scrutiny. It engages with the literature on scrutiny, committees and deliberative institutionalism, while also charting the change in EP-ECA inter-institutional relations.

The promotion of a European Health Union, which has gained prominence at the EU level notably since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, has mostly been connected to political activism from the European Commission and a number of member state governments. As yet, however, research on EU health policy has largely underestimated the significant impact of the European Parliament (EP) on the initiation of policy measures pursuing all EU citizens’ access to equal health and health care. This paper seeks to fill this gap by analyzing specifically how the EP shaped the EU health agenda under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Based on a document analysis of parliamentary resolutions, reports, plenary debates and working documents as well as Commission proposals and adopted EU legislation, the paper traces the influence of EP policy making during two phases, namely during the pre-pandemic phase of health agenda setting by the new Commission (2019-20), and the phase of health policy making in times of crisis, under the impression of COVID-19 (since March 2020).

This paper intends to address the question if Europeanisation in asylum policy may be culminating in the EP as a securitising actor. It departs from the Europeanisation concept, capable of unleashing a bottom-up direction, with the upload of national preferences to the EU. In the last decade, asylum policy has been subject to strong politicisation and a preferred theme of Eurosceptic parties. These, in turn, have acquired a stronger representation in the EP, particularly in the 2019 elections. The research confronts recent studies of voting behaviour in the EP, concluding that political groups are guided by rational and constructivist perspectives, adopting more pragmatic and less liberal and integrationist positions. It is argued that this trend can recently be explained by ideology rather than by rational and constructivist approaches and may determine a securitised policy. To test this, the process of proposals of resolutions is analysed, with which no binding effect release political groups from the procedural constraints of the legislative procedure, an argument of the rationalist and constructivist framings. The research relies on the hypothesis that if an issue is very salient and politicised in national politics, the EP absorbs domestic politicisation, which will drive proposals and voting preferences. Europeanisation and collective securitisation are the structural theoretical frameworks while voting results and qualitative analysis of resolutions proposals presented in 2019 are the primary sources of this research.

One of the key results of the 2019 elections is the increased fragmentation of the European Parliament. For the first time since the creation of the EP, the two main political families do not have a majority. While it was initially seen as a potential threat for the European Union, recent research has shown that this new situation has not created any deadlock thus far and that the EU has still been able to manage a new crisis situation with the COVID-19 pandemic (Novak et al., 2021; Truchlewski et al., 2021; Christiansen, 2021). However, this higher level of fragmentation poses a challenge for the EP and its place in the EU decision-making system. The aim of this paper is to examine the consequences of higher political fragmentation on coalition formation in the EP. More precisely, it will analyse to what extent this higher fragmentation has impacted the traditional dominance of the grand coalition between the Socialist family and Christian Democratic political forces. To examine this question, we rely on an analysis of roll-call votes (RCV) at the plenary level.