Parliamentary Questions and Representation of Territorial Interests in the EP

Abstract

This chapter explores the territorial dimension and its recent evolutions during the current European Parliament’s mandate. This territorial dimension is generally considered to be central to the process of representation at the national level but has been relatively neglected in the EP to date. Rather than assuming an electoral disconnection between MEPs and EU territories, authors take an inductive approach to empirically examine the extent to which territorial representation is reflected in members’ practices. To do so, they rely on an analysis of MEP’s written questions, which constitutes another understudied topic. The content of these questions is used as an indicator of members’ priorities, centres of interest, and conception of their mandate, as well as of their evolution in the recent period of time.