Les relations internationales sont aujourd’hui confrontées à un mouvement en faveur dela démocratisation de leurs espaces décisionnels. Les parlementaires deviennentprogressivement des acteurs clés dans ce scénario, organisant des forums transnationauxde délibération qui prétendent influencer l’action gouvernementale dans diversdomaines. Ce phénomène touche aussi les intégrations régionales, dont l’Unioneuropéenne et son parlement co-législateur constituent le cas le plus remarquable. Àl’inverse, en Amérique latine, la tradition présidentialiste et le caractèreintergouvernemental des initiatives régionales ont toujours confiné les parlementaires àun rôle secondaire. Pourtant, contre toute attente, un parlement a été créé au sein duMercosur en 2006. Comment expliquer un tel choix institutionnel ? Cette thèse sepropose d’analyser les raisons de la création du Parlement du Mercosur (Parlasur) audelàdes discours officiels. Pour ce faire, on mobilise l’ensemble théorique des « troisi », selon lequel des déterminants découlant des institutions, des intérêts et des idéesjouent un rôle conjoint dans l’action politique. Ces facteurs sont mis en perspective àl’aide des théories de l’action publique, qui soulignent le rôle de la temporalité, descoalitions de cause et de l’inspiration des modèles déjà existants dans le changementinstitutionnel. Ce cadre théorique est ensuite appliqué à l’examen des quatre périodesfondamentales de la construction du Parlasur : le développement institutionnel del’ancienne Commission parlementaire conjointe ; la montée en puissance des relationsentre le Mercosur et l’Union européenne et le transfert de mécanismes d’intégration ; lemoment critique correspondant à la confrontation de la Zone de libre-échange desAmériques aux nouvelles idéologies gouvernantes ; enfin, la difficileinstitutionnalisation du nouveau parlement. Cette analyse chrono-thématique estorientée empiriquement par l’objectif de tracer le parcours des variables explicativesdans le processus institutionnel, sur la base d’entretiens semi-directifs et d’observationsconduites au Mercosur et en Europe. / Recently, some movements have been calling for the democratization of decisionmakingspaces in international relations. Members of parliament have progressivelybecome key actors in this scenario, organizing transnational deliberative forumsintended to influence several domains of governmental action. This is also occurring atthe regional integration level, with the European Union and its co-legislative parliamentas the most prominent examples. In Latin America, on the other hand, the presidentialtradition and intergovernmental character of regional initiatives have always relegatedmembers of parliament to a secondary position. However, against all expectations, aparliament was created in Mercosur in 2006. How can this institutional choice beexplained? This dissertation aims to analyze the reasons for the creation of the MercosurParliament (Parlasur) beyond the official discourse. In order to do so, it explores thecombination of institutions, interests and ideas in determining political action. Thesefactors are contextualized through policy process theories, which underline the role oftiming, advocacy coalitions and inspiration in existing models in institutional change.This theoretical framework is then applied to the study of the four fundamental stages ofthe Parlasur building: the institutional development of the former ParliamentaryCommission; the relations between the Mercosur and the European Union and thetransfer of integration mechanisms; the critical moment when the Free Trade Area ofthe Americas was confronted by the new governmental ideologies; and the difficultinstitutionalization process that is being faced by the new parliament. This chronothematicanalysis is intended to trace the path of explanatory variables in thisinstitutional result, based on semi-structured interviews and observations carried out inMercosur as well as in the European Union.

In 2014 the Czech republic celebrated 10th anniversary of accession to the European Union and the third elections to the European Parliament took place. It is these elections and especially the pre-election campaigns this diploma thesis focuses on. Its main goal is to analyze these pre-election campaigns, evaluate whether they were effective and whether media choices in them were influential to the election results.

The European Parliament elections have for decades been described as 'second-order national elections', meaning that parties tend to have a national focus rather than a European one. Furthermore, the parties are often described as a weak link between the European Union and its citizens. Studies on the parties' election promises have mainly been done on national elections and show that election promises become increasingly important over time. However, no previous studies have looked at election promises in European elections. The purpose of this comparative case study is to compare the election promises that Swedish parliamentary parties present in their election manifestos for the European Parliament elections of 2014 and 2019, in order to contribute to both the discourse on European Parliament elections and the discourse on election promises. Two established fields of research that have not previously met in this way. Based on previous research, this study tests eight hypotheses on the material. By mapping and analyzing 1374 election promises from 16 election manifestos, the result shows a predominant share of election promises with a European focus, rather than national. The election promises are surprisingly specific rather than vague and mainly critical of EU-policy rather than the European Union as a political system. The conclusion of this result is that the European Parliament elections as 'second-order national elections' do not emerge when election promises are studied. The results of this study has shown that there is reason to revise the prevailing picture of European Parliament elections in this field of research.

The European Union is suffering from a legitimacy crisis, which thus far has culminated with Great Britain’s decision to exit the union. According to the ‘opposition deficit thesis’, this is caused as there is no arena in which effective opposition can be voiced in the European Union, which forces EU citizens to organise their opposition outside the political system, and often against it. However, as no systemic analysis has been conducted on the opposition deficit in the EU’s democratic centre, no convincing conclusions has been made. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to systemically test the opposition deficit thesis, and to add to the current lack of research on the topic. The centre for any democratic legitimacy is the political system’s elected representatives in parliament, in which any opposition deficit would strongly indicate a democratic deficit. Therefore, I ask: is the European Parliament an arena for effective opposition? To test the opposition deficit systematically and empirically, data from 20 plenary debates between the years 2005-2007 in the European Parliament were gathered. Through simple statistical analysis, we conclude that most statements are oppositional (55 percent) and that there is no oppositional deficit. While most opposition is effective and thus has real effect in the policy-making process, the definition and operationalisation provided within the opposition deficit thesis must be refuted due to theoretical inconsistencies. Furthermore, oppositional behaviour at party- and individual level was also investigated, showing that Eurosceptic party groups are more oppositional than mainstream party groups and through their opposition minimise the European Union’s democratic deficit when voiced within the system. Also, we find that there is no significant relationship between gender and political opposition, contrary to past assumptions. Therefore, it is concluded that there is no oppositional deficit in the European Parliament, and possibly no such deficit in the European Union. So, while the European Union it is suffering a legitimacy crisis which may be caused by a democracy deficit, it is not correlated to political opposition as described by the opposition deficit thesis.

The aim of the thesis is to find out whose interests are promoted by the European Parliament Committee rapporteurs in a legislative process. The thesis tries to show on the case study of approving the Passenger Name Record (PNR) directive if the rapporteurs of the directive who influence the most the negotiations are influenced by their national party, the national government, the EP political group or by their own ideological interests. It was supposed that a very political topic as the directive PNR undoubtedly is, would be influenced the most by the national governments which alongside France tried to react on the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015 by adopting the directive and improving the security situation in the Europe. Through the interviews with the representatives of the EP political groups and content analysis of the relevant documents, the thesis concludes that in the concrete case of PNR directive, the interests of the governments are not the most significant but the ideological interests of the rapporteurs are. They are either in line with the interest of the EU citizens' better security situation or better protection of their personal data. The rapporteurs voted according to ability to push their interests to the directive proposal.

Communication of the European Parliament with the public takes place within various means and on different levels. This thesis offers an analysis of the European Parliament's communication strategy through the role-play game in the Brussels Parlamentarium. A role- play game simulating the legislative procedure of the European Union is available in all the EU official languages and it is targeted primarily at the youth between 15 and 18 years. The analysis is based on the political communication and political marketing theory, as well as on the concept of the role-play game as an educational tool. The methodological background of the analysis is embedded in the ethnographic research and its constituent methods, especially a participant observation and questionnaires survey, further completed by qualitative analysis of the visual and textual materials of the game. First, the advertising tools of the RPG are presented. Second, the course of the game is described and its transcript analysed. Third, the ways of reception of the activity by the participants are illustrated. The goal of the thesis is to show whether the role- play game is a successful communication tool of the European Parliament with the youth.

The diploma thesis "Social networks as a communication channel of selected political parties before the elections to the European Parliament in 2019" deals with political communication on the social network Facebook and Twitter. The aim of this thesis is to find out how selected political parties communicate on social networks in the election campaign, what type of form and content they used the most. The work also focuses on differences between communication on both networks. The theoretical part focuses on explaining the concept of political communication and political marketing, defines social networks and their types. The next sections are devoted to a brief description of selected networks and political subjects and describe the connection between the political space and the tools of social networks. The analytical part is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis in four weeks before the elections to the European Parliament in 2019. The gained data are supplemented by information from semi-structured interviews. The thesis evaluates the strategy of using social networks with the aid of established research questions and hypotheses.

As a global phenomenon, the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has impacted the socio-economic and political life like no other event of the recent past. With over 600,000 fatalities in its member-states, an unprecedented economic recession and damage to the Single Market, the European Union has been hit unexpectedly hard by COVID-19. Through the lens of Securitisation, and more precisely, Collective Securitisation, this thesis has the purpose to examine how the EU and its institutions have responded to the threat that is the spread of SARS-CoV-2, asking ‘Has SARS-CoV-2 been successfully securitised in the European Union?’. By applying a qualitative content analysis to speeches of the European Commission published between January and May 2020 as well as to a European Parliament Plenary debate following the speech of Commission President von der Leyen on April 16th, 2020, the thesis establishes that securitising moves have taken place in the examined timeframe and that they have been accepted by the European Parliament. In accordance with the Copenhagen School framework of Securitisation and Sperling and Webber’s Collective Securitisation model, the thesis concludes that COVID-19 was therefore successfully securitised.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether the drop in voter turnout between the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections, as well as the general apathy toward the politics of the European Union, in the Czech Republic was contributed to by the mass media. Specifically, this thesis will examine the two most read daily newspapers of both 2009 and 2014, Blesk and Mladá Fronta Dnes, and analyze its articles with the use of search words in order to assess whether any change occurred in the way the European Union, its policies and institutions, were presented immediately prior to the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections. This will be achieved through the use of content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, while evaluating the articles in comparative fashion. The thesis will argue that, given the essential role of the media as intermediary between the world of politics and the electorate, the portrayal, or lack thereof, of the European Union is a factor in explaining the electoral dynamics of the country. Key Words: voter turnout; European Parliament elections; mass media; electoral apathy Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The thesis deals in the theoretical part with a presentation and comparison of views of political science on party-political euroscepticism, including a description of the development of the form of eurosceptic factions in the European Parliament after 2014 and political subjects associated in them. Practical part presents, analyzes and interprets the voting of these political entities in the election periods 2014-2019 and 2019-2024, especially in terms of their coherence within individual factions. Both in general (overall average coherence) and by individual thematic agendas. In its outputs, the work tries, based on the obtained data, to answer the question, what are the dominant common ideological characteristics of the eurosceptic political parties represented in the European Parliament and whether they form, or can form, a separate so-called party-political family. Keywords: Euroscepticism, European Union, European Parliament, factions, political parties, populism, elections Title: Eurosceptic Political Parties Factions in the European Parliament: constitution, form, political activity and changes in the context of the European Parliament elections 2019