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As the calendar clicked into 2022, the ninth European Parliament reached a significant milestone: its halfway point.
To mark the middle of the five-year term, POLITICO crunched the data on the chamber’s work so far. The 705 elected officials in the latest iteration of Europe’s largest parliamentary assembly have spent two and a half years, some three-dozen plenary sessions and more than 4,000 roll-call votes shaping policies on everything from trade with China to digital rules and the fight against climate change.
They also played the political game. Sent to Brussels by their constituents in July 2019 to supercharge EU policy or — just as often — kill it, MEPs squabbled with other EU officials over which direction the bloc should take and among themselves over who holds the power.
Our analysis drew from public voting and attendance records, party polling and POLITICO’s Pro Intelligence service, which gathers data from public sources and tracks legislative moves, to gain insight into the power dynamics at play.
The results showed who led the work and who lost most fights; who has friends and who is isolated; who grabbed the spotlight and who got egg on their face. And — with another two and a half years of work left this term — it gave a glimpse of what to expect ahead of the next election in 2024.
5 takeaways on shifting power dynamics
While the Social Democrats would win an election held today, the Greens are seeing the biggest success in keeping their members united. We found out which of the bloc’s political groups are winning and which have lost ground in this parliamentary term.
Who’s the Parliament’s biggest rebel? Who’s its biggest clacker? Our analysis of votes, amendments and parliamentary activity revealed the MEPs who stood out in good, bad and outright weird ways.
Since lawmakers took up their seats, 13 have violated the Parliament’s rules enough to be punished by its president. We give a rundown their offenses, the sanctions they faced and the excuses they provided.
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