This research focuses on contributions – oral and written – on the topic of linguistic diversity made by Members of the European Parliament during the plenary sessions from 2000 to 2003 inclusive and analyses the attitudes expressed by Members towards the concept of linguistic diversity, particularly as it applies to the national languages and the regional autochthonous languages of Member States. The analysis is set within a framework consisting of contemporary academic work and the classic work by Johann Gottfried von Herder and the German Philosophen. The European Year of Languages 2001 was widely supported by the European Commission; but an important question seemed to be what significance, if any, did maintaining linguistic diversity have for Members of the European Parliament in the years immediately following 2001. This research set out to discover to what extent issues related to linguistic diversity were given expression to in the plenary debates from 2000 to 2003, the years corresponding essentially to the fifth parliamentary term. Was only lip service paid to linguistic diversity in the years 2000 – 2003? Or did the European Year of Languages focus the attention of parliamentarians from all political groups in an ongoing way on issues of language use and preservation in the European Union, especially since the Union was to be significantly enlarged by the addition of ten Member States on January 1, 2004? Did the MEPs recognise that there were social and economic benefits accruing from pursuing policies of linguistic diversity? How important was linguistic diversity to the essence of the European Union in the eyes of its Members of Parliament? To what extent did MEPs espouse the use of just one language as a preferred method of communication in and around the Parliament? How much respect was there for the regional and minority indigenous languages of the European Union? Did MEPs regard linguistic diversity as an important consideration in determining the suitability of other countries seeking accession? The research reviews the response from the Commission in subsequent years to the views articulated by the MEPs. Finally, are there lessons in any of this for New Zealand?

National parliaments (NPs) are vital to the European Union’s (EU’s) democratic legitimacy. They are tasked with controlling their governments through oversight and scrutiny while providing a deliberative forum by offering policy alternatives, informing, and connecting citizens to the EU. NPs can only provide public accountability if they adequately meet these challenges, ensuring a well-informed citizenry that is able to form and vote according to their preferences on European integration. To do this, Members of Parliament (MPs) need to publicly communicate EU issues and important developments concerning the EU project. Yet, the use of the communicative function of NPs in EU affairs remains underexplored and questions of public accountability unanswered. Against this background, this study aims to shed light on the general salience of the EU in the plenary by adopting a principal-agent framework to analyze the factors that co-vary with the willingness of MPs to discuss the EU. Employing regression analysis on a novel dataset with observations from 17 European NPsincluding over 20,000 plenary protocols from 2006-2019, this study notes a general upwards trend of the emphasis MPs put on the EU over time, driven by critical junctures, most notably, the Lisbon treaty and the Eurozone crisis. The results of this study also indicate that MPs are most consistently responsive to elections and other key EU events. Besides, factors related to authority transfers and EU legislation as well as strategic party incentives determine how much MPs use their communicative function in the plenary. Nevertheless, this study unveils some challenges to the democratic legitimacy of the EU.