The diploma thesis is about the elections to the European Parliament in Poland and Germany 2019 and their reflection in the local media, which are the periodicals Junge Freiheit, WSieci, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Rzeczpospolita, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Gazeta Wyborcza, Jungle World and Kultura Liberalna. The thesis presents the historical development of the European Parliament, its competencies, and the electoral system. It also acquaints the reader with its powers and composition in 2019. In the thesis, the author presents the first direct elections to the European Parliament in Germany in 1979 and in Poland in 2004. In order to create an objective overview of the elections for the reader, the author presents the elections in Germany and in Poland in 2009 and in 2014. Subsequently, the 2019 elections themselves are the main theme, along with party campaigns and election polls in the two selected countries. Quantitative and qualitative research of the selected media was conducted to find answers to the research questions, which it adequately did. These answers are thoroughly commented after presentation. The final part of the thesis deals with the comparison of periodicals, summarization of the qualitative analysis and the conclusion of the whole diploma thesis.

Diploma thesis Italy in the 90's - political earthquake and it's impact on the European Parliament elections focuses on political and social changes that Italy experienced during the early 90's and their impact on election campaigns and European Parliament election results in 1994 and 1999. The paper recaps evolution of powers of the European Parliament, legal base for EP elections in Italy and it summarizes both internal and external factors that led to radical changes in political and partisan system and eventually to the end of the First Italian Republic. It depicts collapse of party system and rise of new political parties and leaders on the background of international context, judical investigation into political corruption Mani Pulite and offensive of organized crime as a reaction to it. The key part of the thesis is dedicated to the European elections in Italy in 1994 and 1994, it analizes election campaigns led by the Italian political parties and the electoral results. The main objective of the thesis is to confirm or disprove initial hypthesis that Italian political parties perceived the European elections as a tool to reach their domestic aims, as research revealing distribution of powers in the national arena.

Social networks have very quickly become a popular channel for politicians to communicate information to their constituents. The thesis deals with the question, if the social network communication affects the election results. It also monitors the activity of selected candidates for the post of MEP before the elections in 2019. Their posts on Facebook and Twitter are then analyzed to find a possible relationship between the activity of candidates on social networks in the period from April 23rd to May 23rd, 2019 and the outcome of the European elections. At the same time, it also fact-checks the candidates' practical statements.

This study investigates minilateral partnerships, also referred to as regional cooperations, with the purpose of identifying whether these types of partnerships may be perceived as cohesive political grouping in the EP and if such cooperations influence the way in which MEPs debate and vote. The study uses a combined qualitative and quantitative method to study the behaviour of MEPs from the Visegrad Group when debating and voting on migration and asylum policy, during the Eight European Parliament. The thesis argues that the studied subject, i.e., the Visegrad Group, and the discussed issue i.e., migration and asylum policy, jointly generate a most likely case allowing for a reasonable degree of generalization. The study finds that the Visegrad Group is a politically incohesive group during the beginning of the studied time period, but that its cohesion notes a substantial increase towards its end. Despite the increase, the consistency of the Visegrad Group MEPs debating and voting as a group is found to be below the average cohesion of the European party groups. The study further confirms earlier research stating that national consideration and party politics remains the two strongest determinants of MEP debating and voting behaviour. The thesis concludes that the influence of minilateralism on MEPs is insignificant.

One fundamental condition for a democracy to work is the possibility for voters to hold their legislators to account. Because voter turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections is so low, however, the task of holding MEPs accountable is passed on to the national parties. These become ‘transmission belts’ between voters and legislators: they instruct the MEPs how to vote and present them threats and rewards to ensure they vote as promised. To study how well this works, this thesis aims at exploring what influences how an MEP votes in situations where the national party and the European Party Group (EPG) hold conflicting policy positions. A new analytical framework is built to generate and preliminarily test hypotheses concerning what influences how an MEP votes. The analytical framework is largely inspired by Strøm (1990), who assumes that legislators are driven by their wishes of getting policy through, reaching high office and being re-elected. Normally, these goals can be reached with the help of the legislator’s party, which is why legislators have an incentive to keep their party happy and vote according to its policy position. In the EP, however, things are complicated by the fact that certain goals can only be reached with the help of legislators’ EPGs. Hypotheses concerning what may drive MEPs to vote either with her national party or with her EPG are tested in the thesis with the help of unique interview data, collected from five Swedish MEPs from parties in government. The thesis’ results show that policy-related incentives are most important to MEPs, and that these incentives are mainly controlled by EPGs. Office- and re-election-related incentives are only ascribed limited importance. There are contextual factors that affect these results: if an issue is perceived as important to Sweden or to the national party or if it receives high media attention, MEPs ascribe less importance to EPG-controlled incentives, although this does not mean that national party-controlled incentives increase in importance. In conclusion, MEPs do not seem to feel pressured by their national parties when deciding how to vote. This leads me to the conclusion that the role of national parties as ‘transmission belts’ between voters and MEPs is defective

Are there any consequences of using sports diplomacy? This thesis will look into sports diplomacy in the recent FIFA 2018 and 2022 cases from the lens of the European Parliament. Large sporting events have grown into an international phenomenon, that has been studied from the premises of power. As critique did rise from the cases of FIFA 2018 and 2022, my approach is to analyse the consequence of failed sports diplomacy, how using soft power tactics play in the international political field and how sports play a part in politics. This thesis will use discourse analysis to find the key reasons for EP’s dissatisfaction with FIFA 2018 and 2022.

Cette thèse analyse la socialisation politique de 92,6% des eurodéputés polonais au Parlement européen pendant leur premier mandat entre 2004 et 2009. Son objectif est de comprendre ce processus en détail dans cette institution par définition, supranationale et pro-européenne - et donc de préciser concrètement quels acteurs politiques (première partie) se conforment à quoi, pourquoi, où, en combien de temps, comment, grâce à qui ou quoi (seconde partie) et jusqu’à quel point (troisième partie). L’étude montre que la socialisation politique pendant les cinq premières années n’est pas un processus très puissant car elle provoque seulement l’ajustement aux spécificités formelles et informelles de la vie quotidienne et, possiblement, l’approfondissement plus ou moins léger des attitudes et du comportement de base (dans un sens pro- ou anti- européen, en fonction de l’orientation). Autrement dit, elle transforme les novices en experts mais pas en natifs. Soit elle n’intervient que partiellement et il serait alors préférable de qualifier ce qui se passe réellement tout simplement d’intégration politique et non de socialisation politique soit elle nécessite plus de cinq ans, en commençant par l’acquisition des spécificités europarlementaires, puisque cette étape-ci prend déjà parfois même tout le mandat. / This thesis analyses the political socialization of 92.6% of the Polish Members of the European Parliament during their first mandate from 2004 to 2009. Its aim is to understand in full this process in this institution which is by definition supranational and pro-European and therefore to specify concretely which political actors (first part) comply with what, why, where, how long, how, thanks to whom or what (second part) and to what extent (third part). The study shows that political socialization in the first five years is not a very powerful process as it causes only the adjustment to everyday formal and informal specificities and, possibly, a more or less weak deepening of initial attitudes and behavior (in a pro or anti-European sense, according to the orientation). In other words, the process turns newcomers into experts without making them natives. It either occurs only in part, in which case it would be preferable to characterize what actually happens simply as political integration and not as political socialization, or it takes more than five years, starting with the acquisition of Euro-parliamentary specificities, as this stage sometimes already takes the whole mandate.

Regional political parties and the European Union: Case study of Spain Abstract The diploma thesis "Regional political parties and the European Union: Case study of Spain" focuses on the area of the regional parties on the stage of the European Parliament, a subject which has not been analysed thoroughly in the past. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of this phenomenon on the case of the Spanish historical regions (Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia) which are a recognizable proof of the remarkable institutional strengthening in the framework of a regionalized unitary state. The methodology of triangulation was used for the analysis of this issue as the data of the diverse type (i.e. electoral results, party's material etc.) have been put together through different methods (as a qualitative and quantitative content analysis, deductive and comparative approaches) with the aim to reveal the complete character of the issue and to reach the objective results as possible. The study focuses on the analysis of the regional parties on the European level through their cooperation in the European federations of the political parties as well as the framework of the political groups in the European Parliament. The emphasis is also placed on the analysis of the own work of the members of the European Parliament...

In the tumultuous political climate following Brexit, a new energy has been given to the idea of establishing transnational lists for the European elections. With the ever-increasing need for democratic legitimacy on the EU stage, the system of transnational lists is viewed by many as a salvation to the problem with democratic deficit within the European Union. The idea of transnational lists was voted in the European Parliament during the plenary session in Strasbourg on February 2018 but rejected after a debate on a clearly divided issue. By analysing the debate from 2018, this study aims to investigate what are the conditions, found in the debate, that could make transnational lists in the European Parliament possible.  When analysing the debate from 2018, five significant conditions for transnational lists were identified. These conditions were democracy, question of federal states, the aspect of spitzenkandidaten, solidarity and the size of Member States. Interestingly, the conditions were observed to be both obstacles and possibilities for transnational lists. Taken together, these results suggest that there is an association between the above-named conditions and the failure of the proposition for transnational lists, alternatively, to a future breakthrough.

Diese Anfang 2006 fertiggestellte, nunmehr postum veröffentlichte Publikation untersucht und bewertet detailliert die Positionen zum Vertrag über eine Verfassung für Europa jener Parteien, die im Europäischen Parlament der "Konföderalen Fraktion der Vereinten Europäischen Linken/Nordische Grüne Linke" (GUE/NGL) angehören. Die Debatte zum europäischen Verfassungsvertrag zwang alle linken Parteien in einer erstmalig geführten transnationalen Debatte, ihre Haltung zur EU-Mitgliedschaft des eigenen Landes, ihre Position zum Verfassungsvertrag als solchem sowie ihre generelle Bereitschaft zu verdeutlichen, einem „anderen“ oder „besseren“ Vertrag zuzustimmen. Die Arbeit zeigt eine sehr hohe Fragmentierung der Haltung der linken Parteien zum Verfassungsvertrag und zur Mitgliedschaft ihrer Länder in der EU. / This at the beginning of 2006 finished, now posthumously published publication examines and evaluates in detail the positions of the parties that belong to the European Parliament of the "Confederal Group of the European United Left / Nordic Green Left" (GUE / NGL) about the European constitutional treaty. The respective debate forced them in a transnational debate to define their positions on the EU membership of their country, their position on the Constitutional treaty as such, as well as their overall readiness for agreeing with an "other" or "better" treaty. The work shows a very high level of fragmentation of the attitude of the left parties on the constitutional treaty and the EU membership of their countries.