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

This paper examines the discourse surrounding Italian gastronationalism throughout the previous four European Parliament elections to gain a deeper comprehension of the escalating significance of gastronationalism over the past two decades. In this examination, the notion of gastronationalism, situated within the wider context of banal nationalism, is elucidated, and delineated to achieve the intended objective. Utilizing a case study approach, this research investigates the right-wing political party "Alleanza Nazionale / Fratelli d'Italia" through an analysis of prominent party members' discourse in newspapers and social media platforms. The findings reveal a notable escalation in the employment of gastronationalism in AN/FdI's political rhetoric from 2014 to 2019, which bears a discernible correlation with the linguistic style and communicative techniques employed by the Italian Fascist Party, originally established by Benito Mussolini.

In the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in extreme right Western European parties. Well-established parties such as the National Front (FN) in France, Vlaams Belang (formerly Vlaams Blok) in Belgium, and Lega Nord in Italy have been scrutinized. However, extreme right parties that have just recently begun to experience electoral successes such as the British National Party (BNP) have received less evaluation and discussion in the literature. Therefore, this study examines the BNP‟s electoral fortunes in the European elections of 1999, 2004, and 2009. I explore the support for the BNP using the traditional variables of unemployment, education, income, and immigration. In addition to these variables, I examine how support for other parties present in Great Britain, such as the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the center-right Conservative Party affects electoral support for the BNP. I find that support for other right-wing parties in Great Britain do exert an influence on BNP electoral fortunes (the UKIP a positive one, and the Conservative Party a negative one). I also find a strong negative link between BNP support and education and a weak positive one between BNP support and unemployment. However, income and immigration rates appear to have no effect on voter support for the BNP.

The European Parliament elections have since the 1980's been described as 'second-order national elections', which, among other things, means that they are less important to both political parties and to voters. Scholars have often described political parties as a weak link between the European Union and its citizens. Previous studies of the fulfillment of election promises have mainly focused on national governments, and not national political parties in the European Parliament. The purpose of this descriptive study is to investigate the level of fulfillment of election promises that Swedish parliamentary parties present in their election manifestos for the European Parliament election 2014. Based on previous research, this study tests five hypotheses on the material. By mapping and analyzing 183 election promises from 8 election manifestos, the results show a lower fulfillment level than Swedish governments usually achieve on the national arena. The result showed one possible covariation between which party groups the political parties belonged to and fulfillment, but no clear patterns between the characteristics of the election promise and fulfillment. The results of this study has shown that there is reason to further investigate and try to better understand election promises that are given ahead of European Parliament elections.

Populism is a phenomenon that impacts not only nation-states and their institutions but also the institutions of international-supranational organizations. This is the case of the European Union, where populist radical right parties (PRRPs) – the most predominant type of populism in Europe – reached the Parliament in 1984, consolidated in 2014, and have since then participated in the debates about the European legislation. Such participation has been mainly framed by the current functioning of the European Parliament (EP), which grants greater importance to alliances instead of individual Members of the Parliament, thereby, PRRPs cooperated among themselves in three groups: the European Conservatives and Reformists, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, and the Europe of Nations and Freedom.  Particularly in migration, a key area of interest of these parties because of their nativist and authoritarian characteristics, these alliances have specific positions and therefore, have promoted different strategies aimed at increasing the powers of member states by diminishing European integration, strengthening the EU external borders, and preventing the arrival of new immigrants, especially the illegal ones. This was particularly reinforced in the 8th parliamentary period that lasted from 2014 to 2019, which also coincided with the 2015 refugee crisis. In this context, the EP adopted and implanted various legislation to cope with the crisis, including the European Border and Coast Guard, the European travel document for the return of illegally staying third-country nationals, the Entry/Exit System, the European Travel Information and Authorization System, and the reinforcement of the mandate of the EU-LISA agency.  In 30.905 words, this research aims at understanding whether PRRPs’ characteristics and positions have influenced the EU immigration legislation, measured by how successful have been the two common strategies they undertake to do so: influencing the voters’ attitudes and opinions and obstructing parliamentary proceedings. Data shows that these groups still have a minority in the Parliament, do not vote together as a bloc, some of them do not actively participate in parliamentary work, and therefore, have limited power to impact the legislation as they can only do it indirectly by shaping the behavior of their electoral force.