Abstract
This chapter investigates the relationship Spanish members of national and regional parliaments have with the European Union (EU). Initially the main hypothesis relied on the “ever-closer union” approach. As Spain is one of the European countries that benefits most from European financial transfers, one would expect the Spanish parliamentary to be very EU-oriented. The final results, however, suggests a very different picture. Although Spanish parliamentarians’ opinion of the EU is generally positive, the data also demonstrated that the EU is virtually absent from their daily concerns. Indeed, the analysis shows that the relationship between the EU and Spanish parliamentarians is based on a so-called “permissive consensus”: Spanish parliamentarians are aware of the benefits and relevance of the EU, but the dynamics of Spanish politics remain clearly national and regional.
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- 1.
The authors thank the members of the research group who helped to improve the quality of this chapter, especially Fabiola Mota, Mariano Torcal and Manuel Alcántara for their useful comments and suggestions.
- 2.
The Eurobarometer question was: “Generally speaking, do you think that Spain’s membership of the European Union is positive?”
- 3.
Such as free trade, the common currency, or the freedom of movement of European citizens.
- 4.
Only Poland received more in absolute terms, at almost 52,000 million euros.
- 5.
Regions whose gross domestic product per inhabitant is less than 75% of the European average.
- 6.
Other examples of EU-Spanish regional offices are the Delegación de Euskadi for the Basque Country, Delegación del Gobierno de la Generalitat de Cataluña for Catalonia, the Oficina en Bruselas de la Fundación Galicia Europa for Galicia and the Delegación de la Junta de Andalucía en Bruselas for Andalusia.
- 7.
Seventy six percent of MPs did not respond to this question, a figure which seems to indicate that Spanish MPs do not consider this an important question.
- 8.
PP: People’s Party.
- 9.
PSOE: Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.
- 10.
IU: United Left.
- 11.
CiU: Convergence and Union; ERC: Republican Left of Catalonia.
- 12.
English and French are the foreign languages that the MPs speak the most (question I36).
- 13.
In 1999, the European Parliament forced Jacques Santer’s Commission to resign because of evidence of corruption among its members.
- 14.
According to Poguntke and Webb (2005), presidentialization is based on the increasing globalization of politics and the necessity for quick and coordinated decisions in the face of global challenges, the relevance of media and the erosion of traditional allegiances. This has resulted in the personalization of electoral campaigns, the concentration of power in the national executives and the asymmetry of power between the leader parties and their militants.
- 15.
EU citizens already have the right to vote in local and EU elections.
- 16.
PNV: Basque Nationalist Party.
- 17.
UPN: Navarrese People’s Union.
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Mayoral, J.A., Carillo-López, A., Harguindéguy, JB. (2018). Parliaments and the European Union. In: Coller, X., Jaime-Castillo, A., Mota, F. (eds) Political Power in Spain. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63826-3_15
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