Parliamentary Questions and Oversight in The European Union: European Journal of Political Research 50: 53-79, 2010

European Journal of Political Research 50: 53–79, 2010 53
doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2010.01919.x
Parliamentary questions and oversight in the European Union ejpr_1919 53..79
SVEN-OLIVER PROKSCH1 & JONATHAN B. SLAPIN2

1
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim,
Germany; 2Department of Political Science, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
Abstract. Delegation in the European Union (EU) involves a series of principal-agent

problems, and the various chains of delegation involve voters, parties, parliaments, govern-
ments, the European Commission and the European Parliament. While the literature has
focused on how government parties attempt to monitor EU affairs through committees in
national parliaments and through Council committees at the EU level, much less is known
about the strategies opposition parties use to reduce informational deficits regarding Euro-
pean issues. This article argues that the European Parliament (EP) offers opposition parties
an arena to pursue executive oversight through the use of written parliamentary questions.
Using a novel dataset on parliamentary questions in the EP, this article examines why
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) ask questions of specific Commissioners. It
transpires that MEPs from national opposition parties are more likely to ask questions of
Commissioners. Questions provide these parties with inexpensive access to executive scru-
tiny.This finding has implications for the study of parliamentary delegation and party politics
inside federal legislatures such as the EP.
Introduction
The policy process in democratic political systems is one of delegation. In

parliamentary systems, voters delegate to political parties in parliament, who
delegate decisions to a government, which delegates jurisdictions to cabinet
ministers, who, in turn, delegate to bureaucrats to implement policies. Thus, all
political actors make decisions on behalf of those who authorise them (Müller
et al. 2003). Yet, delegation in democracies also entails agency problems.
Elected members of the legislature benefit from delegating tasks to a better
informed executive. The agents, in the form of the executive and bureaucracy,
may not share the policy preferences of Members of Parliament. When these
policy preferences diverge, bureaucrats may use their informational advantage
to shirk, meaning they implement policies at odds with the preferences of the
principal, leading to agency loss (Niskanen 1971; Kiewiet & McCubbins 1991).
Politicians, therefore, develop mechanisms to monitor and check the executive
and prevent shirking (McCubbins et al. 1987, 1989).
© 2010 The Author(s)
Journal compilation © 2010 (European Consortium for Political Research)
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA
54 sven-oliver proksch & jonathan b. slapin
In the European Union (EU), the chain of delegation is significantly more

complex than in typical parliamentary or presidential systems. A bicameral
legislature – the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers –
passes European laws on a proposal from a supranational executive: the Euro-
pean Commission. These laws are then implemented by the dual executive of
the European Commission and the Council – that is, the Member State gov-
ernments. Government parties are able to place checks on the Commission,
the EU’s bureaucracy, through a system of committees that grants the Council
of Ministers varying degrees of oversight (Franchino 2000; Pollack 2003). At
the national level, parties can monitor European issues through EU affairs
committees (e.g., Bergman 1997, 2000; Auel 2007). To date, the literature on
oversight in the EU has focused primarily on the relationship between
Member State governments and the European Commission. This perspective
has neglected the role of national opposition parties in oversight; they are
deemed to have few opportunities to acquire information about EU affairs.
Specifically, the ongoing debate about delegation and oversight in the EU has
not paid attention to the fact that, in addition to governing parties, national
opposition parties are represented in the EP, which has developed institutional
mechanisms to monitor European executive activities through a different
chain of delegation. We argue that the instrument of parliamentary questions
in the EP constitutes an ideal tool for national opposition parties to monitor
and reduce informational deficits over European affairs.
This article examines the primary individual oversight mechanism available
to all members of the EP (MEPs) – their ability to ask questions of the
Commission and force it to answer them. All MEPs may ask written and oral
questions of Commissioners, but the ability to question the Commission is a
particularly important oversight mechanism for national opposition parties.
These parties cannot check Commissioners through the Council committee
system and have only limited access to information about European affairs in
national parliaments. The article first reviews the literature on oversight
mechanisms in political systems, and specifically in the EU, which combines
elements of separation-of-powers and parliamentary democracy. We then
discuss how parliamentary questions can serve as a check on ministers and
Commissioners. Finally, we present a novel dataset on written questions and
answers in the sixth European Parliament. Our dataset contains the number of
questions asked by each MEP and answered by each Commissioner. This
represents the most comprehensive data to date on the nature of parliamen-
tary questions in the EU. Our statistical analysis reveals that parliamentary
questions provide a means for national opposition parties in the EP to check
Commissioners, something they cannot do through the Council because of
their opposition status. We also find that MEPs who are more sceptical of
parliamentary questions and oversight in the european union 55
European integration ask more questions, and that questions serve as a tool for
MEPs to gather information relevant to their respective committee speciali-
sation. Our findings have implications for the study of parliamentary delega-
tion and party politics inside federal legislatures such as the EP.
Delegation and oversight in the European Union
Theoretical models of delegation and oversight were initially developed to

understand the relationship between the United States Congress and the
executive-controlled bureaucracy (e.g., Weingast & Moran 1983; McCubbins
& Schwartz 1984, McCubbins et al. 1987, 1989; Kiewiet & McCubbins 1991). In
the United States, Congress faces the problem that bureaucrats in the execu-
tive branch have better policy expertise required for implementing legislation.
Delegation to unelected bureaucrats can result in bureaucratic drift when the
preferences of the bureaucrats differ from the preferences of Congress. This
problem is exacerbated during periods of divided government (Epstein &
O’Halloran 1996, 1999). When the median Congressperson’s party does not
hold the presidency, and as the ideological gap between the President and
Congress grows, the legislature delegates less power to the bureaucracy and
employs more costly control mechanisms to monitor their behaviour. More-
over, Huber and Shipan (2002) have argued that politicians influence the levels
of delegated discretion by specifying the policies that bureaucrats can imple-
ment. Ceteris paribus, divided government in presidential systems and ideo-
logical polarisation in coalition governments in parliamentary systems lead to
less discretion and more specific and lengthy legislation.
Because the political system of the EU shares elements of separation-of-
powers in addition to elements of a parliamentary system, the American
models of delegation and oversight were exported to understand delegation in
the EU (Tsebelis & Garrett 2001; Pollack 1997, 2002; Franchino 2005, 2007).
Moreover, the chains of delegation are quite different from those found in
parliamentary democracy. In European parliamentary democracies, parties
have institutional mechanisms, such as the appointment of junior ministers, to
check their partners in government (Thies 2001). In addition, they can use their
backbenchers and the legislative review process to keep cabinet ministers in
line and prevent ministerial policy drift (Martin & Vanberg 2005), or they can
employ oversight committees (Mattson & Strøm 1995). Finally, they have the
ultimate oversight tool: the vote of no confidence (Huber 1996). In the EP,
these mechanisms are largely lacking.
The European Commission is selected by Member State governments, but
the Commission appointment is subject to a veto from the EP. Traditionally,
the emphasis in delegation research in the EU has been put on Member State
governments as the principals and the European Commission as the executive
agent, and it has tended to ignore the role of the EP. In the EU, Member State
governments, represented in the Council, must decide how much power to
delegate to the European Commission and what form of oversight to use. The
‘comitology’ committee system was developed to allow the Council varying
degrees of control over the Commission. In some policy areas, the Commission
is granted greater leeway when implementing legislation, while in others the
Council exercises more oversight (Franchino 2000; Pollack 2003). There is
some dispute in the EU literature over the role of comitology. While many
believe that comitology exists to serve as a control mechanism, others argue
that it primarily provides a deliberative forum for policy discussions among
governments and Commission bureaucrats.This serves to enhance information
and makes for more efficient policy making (e.g., Joerges & Neyer 1997a,
1997b). There is strong empirical evidence, however, that comitology fulfills an
oversight function (Pollack 2003).
As the legislative power of the EP has increased, so has its ability to check
the Commission. Although the Commission does not serve at the pleasure of
the EP as a cabinet would in a parliamentary system, the EP has acquired the
right to cast an investiture vote before the Commission takes office and it can
also vote the Commission out of office for malfeasance, even though the
supermajority requirement means that it would be difficult for the EP to
dismiss the Commission for political reasons (Hix 2002; Hix et al. 2007). These,
however, are very blunt tools. MEPs do not possess institutional tools to check
the Commission on an issue-by-issue basis in the same way that the Council
does through active involvement in the implementing decisions.1 Nevertheless,
the administrative tasks of the Commission are subject to parliamentary scru-
tiny just like in parliamentary democracies (Hix 2005). For this purpose, the
EP, like national parliaments, has the institution of parliamentary questioning
(Raunio 1996). It is this instrument that gives MEPs and their parties the most
direct access to oversight.
Political parties and legislative oversight
Parliaments are by no means unitary actors scrutinising the executive. In fact,

the literature considers national parties to be at the centre of the complex
delegation chain in the EU. Therefore, we would expect strong differences in
the ways Members of Parliament engage in oversight, depending upon their
relationship with the executive that is being monitored. It is possible to distin-
guish two major chains of delegation in the EU, which we depict in Figure 1.
First, there is the national delegation chain, shown on the left. Voters elect
Figure 1. Delegation in the European Union: Differences between government and oppo-
sition parties in monitoring the European Commission.
members of national parties to a national parliament. A government is then

formed by some of the represented parties. This government sends represen-
tatives to the Council of Ministers, one of the two legislative chambers in the
EU.2 This allows the monitoring of EU affairs at two levels. Parties can check
their ministers in EU affairs committees of the national parliaments and the
government representatives can monitor the Commission in Council commit-
tee meetings. Second, there is the European delegation chain, shown on the
right in Figure 1. Voters elect members of the national parties to the EP,
the other European legislative chamber, where parties also have oversight
opportunities.
Up until now, the literature has focused almost exclusively on how agency
problems are mitigated in the first chain of delegation (national parties –
national parliaments – national governments – Council – European Commis-
sion). National parliaments typically are thought to have an informational
disadvantage in European affairs compared to the governments. Bergman
et al. (2003: 174) emphasise three reasons why the institutional design of the
EU makes it difficult for national parliaments to control executives. First, the
closed nature of Council of Minister meetings create informational asymme-
tries between executives and members of national parliaments. Second, quali-
fied majority voting in the Council makes it difficult for members of national
parliaments to force governments to adhere to a specific policy mandate.
Finally, Bergman et al. point out the extensive involvement of government

ministers and civil servants in drafting and implementing EU legislation, mar-
ginalising national parliamentarians. National parliaments have responded by
setting up EU affairs committees (Bergman 1997, 2000; Raunio 2005; Auel
2007). Bergman et al. report the judgements of country experts for 15 EU
Member States regarding the overall estimate of influence of national parlia-
ments on cabinet ministers in EU affairs. Of these countries, only one national
parliament was deemed to have a strong influence (Denmark), five were
estimated to have a moderate influence and nine parliaments had a weak
degree of involvement (Bergman et al. 2003).3
The implicit focus of most of these analyses is therefore on how national
government parties control their ministers who decide at the EU level. The
points raised by Bergman et al. and the evaluations of the country experts of
the degree of influence of national parliaments mean that it is particularly
difficult for national opposition parties to be involved in parliamentary scru-
tiny.4 Consequently, much less attention has been given to how opposition
parties scrutinise EU decision making.
The distinction between government and opposition parties in parliamen-
tary oversight is not new. Government parties engage in ‘police patrol’ over-
sight (McCubbins & Schwartz 1984) through their backbenchers – an
argument put forward by models of policy making that emphasise the possi-
bility of ministerial drift (Martin & Vanberg 2005). Saalfeld (2000) has argued
that, in addition, opposition parties can engage in government scrutiny, even
though they do not enjoy drastic sanction mechanisms, such as the withdrawal
of majority support. Opposition parties can force the executive to defend its
proposals and they can try to reduce informational asymmetries to challenge
government initiatives and propose policy alternatives. With regard to EU
affairs, though, opposition parties have almost no serious means of extracting
information other than through relatively weak EU affairs committees. Even
then, information is likely to focus on what the national government has done
in the Council. Indeed, opposition parties complain about the quality of infor-
mation provided to them by the national government, the lack of access to
timely information concerning EU decisions and the diffuse debates over
European issues (Holzhacker 2002, 2005). Therefore, the literature has con-
cluded that the opposition is weak as far as monitoring EU affairs is con-
cerned. This, however, has overlooked an important institutional access point
available to opposition parties at the European level.
An obvious, but understudied, arena for executive scrutiny by national
opposition parties is the second chain of delegation (national parties – Euro-
pean Parliament – European Commission). We argue that opposition parties
are likely to use this European chain of delegation to scrutinise the European
Commission and reduce informational asymmetries on EU affairs. Although

not represented in the Council, national opposition parties are present in the
EP. This forum might actually mitigate some of the informational losses that
happen at the national level. While MEPs from parties serving in national
governments may be willing to pass the task of European executive oversight
off on their ministers serving in the Council, MEPs from national opposition
parties do not have this luxury. They may not trust their national government
to oversee the Commission adequately. Opposition MEPs need to make use of
an oversight mechanism available to them in the EP. Of these monitoring
instruments, we would expect that they use the one that enables individual
MEPs to become active without constraints from the political group (Judge &
Earnshaw 2003: 237). The only parliamentary institution that fulfills these
criteria is the written parliamentary question to the European Commission.
Opposition party scrutiny: Parliamentary questions in the EU
Virtually every parliamentary democracy provides Members of Parliament the

opportunity to ask questions of the executive. However, parliamentary ques-
tions remain an understudied and under-theorised aspect of democratic gov-
ernance (but see Franklin & Norton 1993; Wiberg 1995; Rasch 1994; Wiberg &
Koura 1994; Salmond 2009). Wiberg, in one of the more comprehensive studies
of questions in parliamentary democracies, cites several reasons why MPs ask
questions of the executive: they may request information, press the govern-
ment for action, attempt to gain personal publicity, demand an explanation,
attack specific ministers or rally the opposition troops (Wiberg 1995: 181). In
general, though, Wiberg (1995: 183) does not believe that executive control is
the primary purpose of parliamentary questions, and he suggests it may not be
a motive at all. In parliamentary systems, he argues, the primary control
mechanism is the threat of a vote of no confidence. However, a recent study
suggests that under coalition governments parliamentary speeches may,
indeed, serve as a control mechanism (Martin & Vanberg 2008). Rasch (1994)
argues that, to the extent it exists, control may simply be a by-product of
questions that are primarily asked for other reasons, such as personal publicity
necessary for reelection. In another recent crossnational study of parliamen-
tary questions, Salmond (2009) examines how the nature of parliamentary
questions affects public engagement in politics, but does not explicitly examine
the reasons why MPs ask questions of the government.
Parliamentary questions have been a long established feature of EU poli-
tics. The right of MEPs to ask questions of the Commission was incorporated
into the Treaty of Rome. The Commission is bound to respond to these ques-
tions orally or in writing. Since 1973, the Council has agreed to take questions
from MEPs as well, though unlike the Commission, treaty law does not require
the Council to reply.5 Parliamentary questions give MEPs the opportunity to
obtain information or to force the Commission to make a policy statement
(Corbett et al. 2007: 284). Today, there are three forms of questions in the EP:
written questions, oral questions and questions during question time. In one of
the few studies of parliamentary questions in the EU, Raunio (1996) finds that
written questions have been the most popular form of questioning. He suggests
that this is due to the tight restrictions placed on oral questions, which must be
submitted by a parliamentary party group, a committee or a minimum number
of MEPs. Whether an oral question is placed on the EP’s agenda is at the
discretion of the EP’s Conference of Presidents. Raunio also points out that
the effectiveness of question time is limited by the fact that only one Commis-
sioner appears before the EP at a time. Given the specialisation of Commis-
sioners, it is unlikely that the Commissioner present is an expert on the subject
that the MEP wishes to address. In contrast, there are fewer procedural
restraints placed on written questions. MEPs can ask questions on any topic
at anytime,6 and questions are generally answered by the responsible Com-
missioner. This means that, unlike during question time, MEPs can direct
their questions at specific Commissioners by shaping the issue area their
question addresses. For these reasons, our empirical analysis focuses on written
questions.
While there may be reasons to question the extent to which parliamentary
questions serve a control function in European national parliaments (e.g.,
Wiberg 1995), we argue that they are more likely to serve this function in the
EP. First, due to the second order nature of EP elections (Reif & Schmitt 1980;
Marsh 1998; Hix & Marsh 2007) and relatively little media coverage of the EP
(Meyer 1999; Peter et al. 2003), MEPs have less incentive to ask questions for
reasons of personal publicity and re-election.7 Second, the EU’s separation of
powers system means that the vote of no confidence is not available to MEPs
as the ultimate control mechanism. While the EP has the right to censure the
Commission, the supermajority requirement makes this procedure more
similar to an impeachment in the American Congress than the withdrawal of
majority support in parliamentary systems (Hix 2005: 60). Therefore,
MEPs may need to seek other control mechanisms, even if less than perfectly
effective.
We argue that written parliamentary questions are particularly important
as a control mechanism for MEPs from national opposition parties. In the EP,
national opposition parties do have the opportunity to monitor Commission
activities. For the national opposition, parliamentary questions offer the best
opportunity to check the Commission. This avenue is especially important
because national opposition parties are shut out of the Council and have
informational disadvantages in their parliaments. Moreover, establishing

direct contact to members of the EP gives members of national parliaments
the opportunity to open their own independent channels of influence in EU
policy making (e.g., Auel & Rittberger 2006, Wonka & Rittberger 2009). Case
study evidence suggests that there is an unexplored flow of information from
members of opposition parties in the EP to their fellow partisans in national
parliaments regarding European issues (Holzhacker 2002, 2005). This would
support our argument that opposition MEPs transmit the information gained
through questioning back to their national parties. We therefore hypothesise,
that for reasons of control and scrutiny, MEPs from national opposition parties
will ask more questions of members of the European Commission than MEPs
from parties in national governments. We term this the ‘opposition oversight
model’. The corresponding hypothesis states:
Opposition Oversight Model: MEPs from national opposition parties are

more likely to ask questions of the European Commission than MEPs
from national government parties.
Alternative explanations of parliamentary question activity
Of course, control and oversight are not the only reasons why MEPs ask
questions of Commissioners. All MEPs, regardless of their parties’ national
government status, may need to obtain specialist information from Commis-
sioners regarding their particular legislative policy area. While opposition
MEPs may seek information about a Commissioner’s underlying ideology, or
information regarding policies about which their national government has not
adequately informed them, all MEPs require simple factual information nec-
essary to write good legislation. Indeed, information gathering is an important
aspect of parliamentary activity, particularly for those members who specialise
in a particular policy area (Krehbiel 1991; McElroy 2006). Therefore, some
have suggested that parliamentary question activity reflects MEP specialisa-
tion in the respective EP committees (Bowler & Farrell 1995; Raunio 1996). It
is therefore likely that, in addition to serving as an oversight mechanism,
parliamentary questions play an important role in factual information acqui-
sition within a particular policy area. We call this the ‘informational model’.
Informational Model: MEPs submit more questions to those Commission

portfolios that reflect their specialisation in EP committees.
Finally, an additional motive for asking parliamentary questions may be

obstruction. MEPs highly sceptical of integration have been known to ask
nuisance questions in an attempt to waste the Commission’s time. The most

prolific question-writer during the sixth European Parliament, Robert Kilroy-
Silk, often wrote questions bordering on the absurd. One example includes:
‘Does the Commission attribute the death of culture in France to its absorp-
tion into the EU?’ Because the Commission is required to answer even non-
sense questions, posing them wastes the Commission’s valuable time and
resources.8 Therefore, we may expect there to be an ideological or obstruc-
tionist component to parliamentary questioning. Eurosceptic MEPs, wary of a
supranational bureaucratic body seizing control of policy making in areas they
feel are best handled at the level of national governments, may use questions
as a tool for obstruction as well as oversight. Even after controlling for gov-
ernment and opposition status, MEPs from Eurosceptic national parties are
likely to ask more questions than MEPs favouring deeper EU integration.
Moreover, all MEPs are likely to ask questions of Commissioners who are
highly supportive of EU integration. While related to the opposition oversight
model, as Eurosceptic parties are more likely to be found in the opposition
than in government, this hypothesis is different in substantively important
ways. The opposition model suggests that all opposition parties, regardless of
their views towards the EU, are likely to ask more questions of the Commis-
sion. This hypothesis suggests that only those MEPs from Eurosceptic parties,
regardless of national government status, are more likely to ask questions. We
refer to this as the ‘EU scepticism model’.
EU Scepticism Model: MEPs who are opposed to more European inte-

gration ask more questions of the European Commission, and MEPs,
generally, ask more questions of pro-EU commissioners.
In sum, in addition to our primary theoretical model, the opposition oversight

model, we have offered two additional hypotheses: the informational model
and the EU scepticism model. In the next section, we test these models using a
new dataset on parliamentary questions in the sixth European Parliament.
Data and methods
The theoretical models make predictions about the specific type of MEPs who
ask questions, and about the Commissioner answering these questions. To test
these theories we have constructed a new dataset containing information on
the number of questions each MEP asked of each Commissioner from the
beginning of the sixth European Parliament in 2004 until the end of 2008. Our
observations are at the MEP–Commissioner level. The dependent variable,
QUESTIONSij, is the count of written parliamentary questions asked by MEPi

and answered by Commissionerj. This is a novel way of treating legislative–
executive relationships in the EU. Rather than explaining MEPs’ overall ques-
tioning activity (i.e., the total number of questions asked; e.g., Raunio 1996),
this research design allows us to consider the executive target of parliamentary
monitoring and estimate effects that pertain to specific combinations of Euro-
pean legislators and European Commissioners.9
To construct our variable, we made use of the EP’s parliamentary questions
archive. For each MEP, we downloaded data on all written questions asked.10
For each downloaded written question, we recorded the MEP and the answer-
ing Commissioner. While MEPs cannot send a question directly to the Com-
missioner of their choice, the relevant criterion when allocating a question to
a Commissioner portfolio is the question’s topic. Thus, in practice, MEPs know,
by virtue of the issue they choose, which Commissioner is likely to respond.
We then use these data to create a dyadic dataset of all feasible MEP–
Commissioner combinations. This excludes zero count combinations that are
impossible because Commissioners resigned prior to MEPs entering the EP or
vice-versa. Some parliamentary questions are submitted by groups of MEPs. In
this instance, each MEP is considered separately and the same question is
counted for each MEP in the group. The resulting dataset has the dyadic
structure shown in Table 1. In total, there are 39,730 observations.11
Table 1. Example of dyadic question dataset of MEPs and

Commissioners
Questions asked
MEP Commissioner & answered
MEP1 Commissioner1 8
. . .
. . .
. . .
MEP1 Commissionerm 105
. . .
. . .
. . .
MEP2 Commissionerm 85
. . .
. . .
. . .
MEPn Commissionerm 0
Note: Question counts are only given as examples.

Table 2 presents some summary information for our dependent variable

and its component parts. Our data allow us to identify the MEPs with the most
question activity, the Commissioner portfolios that are highly targeted by the
questions, the country-specific question activitiy and the most common MEP–
Commissioner question-answer exchanges. The MEP Kilroy-Silk asked by far
the most questions, submitting almost twice as many questions as the second
most active MEP.12 Regarding the most targeted Commission portfolios (in the
Barroso Commission), the environment portfolio dominates, followed by the
justice, freedom and security portfolio, and the external relations portfolio.
Regarding country-specific activity, others have suggested that question time
procedures tend to be used by MEPs from countries that are accustomed to
this form of control device in their national parliament (Raunio 1996). Our
data confirm this suspicion. MEPs from the United Kingdom have one of the
highest question counts with regard to specific Commissioners, with each
British MEP asking, on average, 1.2 questions of each Commissioner. Only
Irish, Greek and Cypriot MEPs show a higher activity. At the bottom of the list
are MEPs from new Member States. Of the founding members of the EU, the
French MEPs have the lowest average question activity. Finally, the ten most
common question-answer combinations confirm the high activity of Kilroy-
Silk, who alone asks 405 questions answered by the Commissioner for Exter-
nal Relations Ferrero-Waldner. This is almost a third of his entire question
activity. In sum, the descriptive statistics by and large confirm previous over-
views of parliamentary questioning in the EP (Raunio 1996). We now opera-
tionalise our theories.
Our opposition oversight model suggests that MEPs from political parties
in the national opposition are more likely to monitor EU commissioners
through questions because they lack the institutional access available to gov-
ernment parties. We would expect this effect to hold even after controlling for
the position of the national party on European affairs. The variable MEP
national party in government indicates whether the MEP’s national party was
in opposition throughout the period of investigation (-1), in government
throughout (1) or spent some time in government and some time in opposi-
tion (0). We take the data on national government and national opposition
membership from the Party Political Make-up of EU Legislative Institutions,
1979–2004 dataset (Warntjen et al. 2008). We also use these data to code the
national party of commissioners, required to calculate other independent
variables.13
The EU scepticism model suggests that MEPs critical of European inte-
gration are more likely to engage in police patrol activity to scrutinise the
European executive. Put differently, MEPs favouring more European integra-
tion are less likely to be critical and monitor the EU executive. Similarly,
Table 2. EP parliamentary questions (2004–2008): Overview
Ten most active Ten most targeted

members of the Number of Commission Number of
European Parliament questions portfolios questions
1. Kilroy-Silk, Robert (UK, Indep. 1,527 1. Environment 3,166

Party & Indep., Non-att.)
2. De Rossa, Proinsias (IE, Labour 829 2. Justice, Freedom 2,142
Party, Socialist Group) and Security
3. Papadimoulis, Dimitrios (EL, 758 3. External Relations 2,058
Synaspismos, GUE/NGL)
4. Karatzaferis, Georgios (EL, 574 4. Health 1,744
Laikos Orthodoxos, IND/DEM)
5. Meijer, Erik (NL, Socialistische 421 5. Employment and 1,737
Partij, GUE/NGL) Social Affairs
6. Angelilli, Roberta (IT, Alleanza 406 6. Transport 1,633
nazionale, UEN)
7. Figueiredo, Ilda (PT, PCP-PEV, 388 7. Regional Policy 1,151
GUE/NGL)
8. Matsakis, Marios (CY, 372 8. Enlargement 1,113
Dimokratiko Komma, ALDE)
9. Mote, Ashley (UK, Independent, 359 9. Agriculture and 1,104
Non-att.) Rural Development
10. Muscardini, Cristiana (IT, 348 10. Internal Market 1,056
Alleanza nazionale, UEN) and Services
Mean number of
questions for a Ten most common
MEP-Commissioner Question MEP-Commissioner Number of
by country average combinations questions
01. Ireland 1.95 1. Kilroy-Silk (UK) & 405

02. Greece 1.78 Ferrero-Waldner (Ext.)
03. Cyprus 1.56 2. De Rossa (IE) & Dimas 206
04. United Kingdom 1.20 (Environment)
05. Netherlands 0.94 3. Karatzaferis (EL) & Hübner 189
06. Belgium 0.86 (Regional Pol.)
07. Portugal 0.69 4. Papadimoulis (EL) & Dimas 184
08. Spain 0.61 (Environment)
09. Italy 0.57 5. Kilroy-Silk (UK) & Frattini 183
10. Malta 0.53 (Justice)
11. Denmark 0.52 6. Hammerstein (ES) & Dimas 167
12. Austria 0.42 (Environment)

Table 2. Continued.
Mean number of
questions for a Ten most common
MEP-Commissioner Question MEP-Commissioner Number of
by country average combinations questions
13. Finland 0.32 7. De Rossa (IE) & Špidla 126

14. Sweden 0.31 (Employm. & Social)
15. Germany 0.24 8. Meyer Pleite (ES) & Dimas 115
16. Luxembourg 0.24 (Environment)
17. France 0.13 9. Buitenen (NL) & Kallas 110
18. Hungary 0.13 (Adm., Anti-Fraud)
19. Czech Republic 0.09 10. Papadimoulis (EL) & 107
20. Poland 0.09 Hübner (Regional P.)
21. Romania 0.07
22. Lithuania 0.05
23. Slovenia 0.05
24. Bulgaria 0.04
25. Estonia 0.04
26. Slovakia 0.03
27. Latvia 0.02
European Commissioners who are pro-European are more likely to receive

scrutiny through questions. To measure the extent to which MEPs and Com-
missioners favour integration, we use the expert survey on the positions of
national parties on European integration conducted by researchers from the
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2006 (Hooghe et al. 2008). This
survey has the advantage of nicely fitting within the period of the sixth Euro-
pean Parliament (2004–2009), thus not creating concerns about time inconsis-
tencies and causality.14 We use the survey question asking experts to describe
the general position on European integration that the party leadership took over
the course of 2006. For each MEP and Commissioner we record the position of
his or her national party, creating two position variables: MEP EU position and
Commissioner EU position.
The informational model posits that European legislators engage in moni-
toring through questions in order to reduce informational asymmetries in their
specific policy jurisdiction. This should be the case when the chosen speciali-
sation of MEPs in parliamentary committees matches the portfolio of the
respective Commissioner. We generate a dummy variable called MEP-
Commissioner: same policy portfolio which indicates if MEP i is a full member
of a parliamentary committee with jurisdiction equivalent to that of Commis-

sioner j. Table A1 in the Appendix lists how EP committees were matched to
the corresponding Commissioner portfolios.
In addition, we include several control variables in our model. We control
for the fact that the MEP and the Commissioner are from the same Member
State, are members of the same national party, and party group. While we do
not have specific theoretical expectations about the direction of the effects, we
want to allow for the possibility that, for example, MEPs are more critical and
ask more questions of Commissioners who belong to a different party family.
We coded the MEP’s country, national party, and EP group membership using
data from the EP website collected by Høyland et al. (2009). Similar data were
generated for all Commissioners from the dataset on the political party
make-up of the EU institutions (Warntjen et al. 2008). Finally, we include
country fixed effects capturing MEP Member State affiliations. We know that
some MEPs, such as those from the United Kingdom, come from countries
with a strong tradition of using parliamentary questions as a means of execu-
tive scrutiny (Raunio 1996). Moreover, institutional features, such as electoral
systems, may lead MEPs from some countries to ask more questions than
others (Bowler & Farrell 1993; Hix 2004).
The dataset includes almost 40,000 MEP–Commissioner pairs, with each
pair appearing only once. One possible statistical approach to estimate the
effects would be a Poisson regression model, as the dependent variable is a
count of parliamentary questions. However, the Poisson model assumes that
the conditional mean of the dependent variable equals its conditional vari-
ance. We, however, find overdispersion – that is, the conditional variance is
greater than the conditional mean. The negative binomial model is a generali-
sation of the Poisson model, which includes an extra parameter to estimate
overdispersion, making it more appropriate for our data.
Furthermore, the number of zero counts in our dependent variable is very
high. Zero counts can occur in our dataset for two different reasons: first,
MEPs may have had systematically fewer opportunities to ask questions; and
second, even if they had had the opportunity they may not have wanted to use
it. MEPs and Commissioners who have shorter legislative and executive
tenure have little opportunity to ask or answer questions. For example, MEPs
from the countries that joined the EU during the sixth legislative term
(Romania and Bulgaria) had fewer opportunities to ask questions compared
with MEPs who were in office for the entire duration of the term. Similarly,
Commissioners who stepped down or changed portfolios had fewer opportu-
nities to answer questions than those who controlled one portfolio throughout.
Likewise, MEPs holding leadership positions within the parliament may have
had fewer opportunities to ask questions because of their numerous other
responsibilities. This creates systematic zero counts because some MEPs had
fewer opportunities to ask questions and some Commissioners had fewer
opportunities to answer them.
However, there are other zero observations in the dataset that are truly due
to the fact that the MEP did not want to ask a question to the Commissioner
even if he or she had the opportunity. These counts are explained by a separate
set of predictors. A standard negative binomial model would not distinguish
between these two different zero-generating processes, but a zero-inflated
negative binomial model accommodates the complication.15 This statistical
model is a mixture model that combines a logit model predicting the system-
atic zero observations, and a negative binomial model predicting the question
counts for those MEP–Commissioner observations that are not systematic
zeros.16 To explain the systematic zero observations we include three variables
in the logit component: the Commissioner’s total tenure within a particular
portfolio in days, the MEP’s tenure in the sixth Parliament in days and a
dummy indicating whether the MEP held a leadership position in the parlia-
ment. The two tenure variables are also included in the count part of the model
as length of tenure likely predicts the number of questions asked as well as
whether questions are asked at all.
Results
Table 3 reports the estimation results. The variable capturing the opposition
oversight model is negative and strongly significant. MEPs who belong to
national parties in government throughout the term are less likely to ask
questions to Commissioners. The results, therefore, suggest that parliamentary
questions in the EP serve as an access point for opposition parties to scrutinise
the EU executive and to extract information on EU affairs. As expected, the
alternative models are also corroborated. The informational model variables
are statistically significant, suggesting that MEPs ask more questions of Com-
missioners who are responsible for a portfolio closely resembling their EP
committee membership. The negative sign on the MEP EU position means
that pro-European MEPs ask fewer questions than those opposed to EU
integration, confirming the effect of the Eurosceptic model. Thus, Eurosceptics
are more active in questioning Commissioners, which may be due to the fact
that they belong to smaller EP groups with fewer resources, sit on fewer
committees or are more critical generally of what the European executive is
doing. At the same time, MEPs ask more questions of Commissioners who are
more pro-European. As far as the control variables are concerned, the EP
group variable suggests that MEPs ask fewer questions of Commissioners
Table 3. EP parliamentary questions: Zero-inflated negative binomial regression
Negative binomial count model: Estimate
Opposition oversight model:

MEP national party in government -0.248 (0.028)***
Informational model:
MEP-Commissioner: same policy portfolio 1.417 (0.064)***
EU scepticism model:
MEP EU position -0.095 (0.014)***
Commissioner EU position 0.148 (0.011)***
Control variables:
MEP-Commissioner: same national party -0.215 (0.196)
MEP-Commissioner: same country 0.180 (0.098)*
MEP-Commissioner: same EP party group -0.116 (0.050)**
MEP tenure (in days) 0.001 (0.00007)***
Commissioner tenure (in days) 0.001 (0.00007)***
Belgium 0.540 (0.136)***

Bulgaria -1.740 (0.307)***
Czech Republic -1.817 (0.169)***
Denmark 0.078 (0.156)
Estonia -1.868 (0.346)***
Finland -0.211 (0.159)
France -1.339 (0.124)***
Germany -0.593 (0.116)***
Greece 1.588 (0.130)***
Hungary -1.347 (0.157)***
Ireland 1.237 (0.157)***
Italy 0.361 (0.117)***
Latvia -2.760 (0.419)***
Lithuania -1.917 (0.233)***
Netherlands 0.316 (0.132)**
Poland -1.710 (0.138)***
Portugal 0.229 (0.136)*
Romania -0.977 (0.166)***
Slovakia -2.603 (0.252)***
Slovenia -2.147 (0.287)***
Spain -0.033 (0.123)
Sweden -0.585 (0.151)***
United Kingdom 0.810 (0.116)***
Intercept -3.563 (0.166)***
Theta (log) -1.503 (0.024)***
Zero-inflation logit model:

MEP tenure (in days) 0.002 (0.0005)***
Commissioner tenure (in days) -0.036 (0.004)***
EP leader -0.825 (0.223)***
Intercept 3.582 (0.642)***
Log-likelihood -21052
Observations 39730
Notes: * p ⱕ 0.1; ** p ⱕ 0.05, *** p ⱕ 0.01. Standard errors are listed in parentheses.

when their national parties belong to the same EP party group, suggesting a
less critical attitude when dealing with executive agents from the same
party family. National party or country congruence between MEPs and
Commissioners, however, do not have an effect. The tenure variables control-
ling for general question activity are positive and significant. MEPs and Com-
missioners with longer tenure in the EP or in the Commission are more likely
to ask and answer questions.
The model also includes Member State dummies. We find that MEPs from
Member States with a strong question time tradition, such as the United
Kingdom, Ireland and Greece, tend to ask more questions, even controlling for
all the other variables in our model.17 These country dummy results are con-
sistent with the earlier findings of Raunio (1996), who also found that MEPs
from these countries tended to ask a disproportionate number of questions.
Moreover, the country dummies reveal a significant difference between MEPs
from old and new Member States, with MEPs from the latter asking signifi-
cantly fewer questions, and Romanian MEPs asking the most and Latvian the
least. In fact, the coefficients on every new Member State dummy are smaller
than the coefficients on any old Member State country dummy, with the sole of
exceptions of France and Romania.
Finally, as a robustness check we estimated the model after dropping ques-
tions asked by the outlier MEP Kilroy-Silk, who was the most active in sub-
mitting questions but, at the same time, caused controversy due to the
questions’ lack of seriousness. The results stay exactly the same. The only
discernible difference is that the coefficient for the MEP’s EU position, while
still statistically significant, is now somewhat smaller. This is not surprising,
however, as Kilroy-Silk’s party (UK Independence Party) is one of the most
sceptical of European integration in the EP.
To evaluate the substantive effects of the variables of interest, we simulate
first differences and plot the predicted number of questions asked of Commis-
sioners as the MEP’s position with regard to EU integration moves from being
opposed (minimum value) to favourable (maximum value). We do this sepa-
rately for MEPs from government and opposition parties, and we also examine
the differences between when the committee and portfolio assignments of the
MEPs and Commissioners do and do not match.18 Thus, the substantive magni-
tude of the effects can be examined and compared simultaneously. The simula-
tion of first differences furthermore allows us to report the uncertainty of the
effects with 95 per cent confidence intervals. Figures 2 and 3 show the simulated
substantive effects based on the parameter estimates from the zero-inflated
negative binomial model. Across the full range of the European integration
position variable, and regardless of whether MEPs and Commissioners deal
with the same portfolios, MEPs from national opposition parties ask more
MEP and Commissioner deal with

same policy portfolio
MEP National Party

in Opposition
4
Predicted Question Count (incl. 95% CI)
1
MEP National Party
in Government
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Opposed to Favors
EU Integration EU Integration
MEP EU Position
Figure 2. Effects of opposition status and EU position given portfolio congruence on par-
liamentary question activity. Dashed lines represent the 95 per cent confidence intervals.
questions than government party MEPs.This distinction is clearest when MEPs

sit in a committee dealing with the same portfolio as the Commissioner of whom
they are asking questions. In this instance, a Eurosceptic MEP from an opposi-
tion party asks, on average, four questions of a specific Commissioner while the
same MEP from a governing party is estimated to ask only approximately
two-and-a-half questions. The difference in the number of questions asked
between MEPs from governing and opposition parties is statistically significant
across the entire range of the MEP position on EU integration, both when the
MEP and Commissioner deal with a similar portfolio and when they do not.
Conclusion
Both national governing and opposition parties have incentives to reduce

informational deficits over EU affairs and monitor the work of the European
MEP and Commissioner deal with

different policy portfolio
4
Predicted Question Count (incl. 95% CI)
2
MEP National Party
in Opposition
MEP National Party

0 in Government
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Opposed to Favors
EU Integration EU Integration
MEP EU Position
Figure 3. Effects of opposition status and EU position given portfolio incongruence on

parliamentary question activity.
Commission. However, only governing parties have direct access to the insti-
tutional mechanisms that receive the most attention in the literature. Govern-
ing parties are represented through their representatives in the Council of
Ministers and participate in the comitology committee system, overseeing the
implementation of EU legislation through the European Commission. At the
national level, governing parties enjoy privileged access to information on
European matters. Opposition parties do not enjoy these advantages. The
literature so far has concluded that oversight mechanisms are largely unavail-
able to opposition parties. However, this has overlooked the representation
and activities of opposition parties in the EP. Even though the EP does not
have all the same oversight mechanisms as a national parliament, MEPs can
ask questions of Commissioners, and Commissioners are required to respond.
This provides national opposition parties with a second channel for European
executive oversight. Using a new dataset on written questions in the EP, we
have found that MEPs from national opposition parties do indeed ask more
questions of Commissioners, even after controlling for ideology and commit-

tee assignments. This is strong evidence that national parties view the oppor-
tunity to ask questions as an information and oversight tool. MEPs from
governing parties do not need to avail of this mechanism as often because they
have other information channels through which they scrutinise the Commis-
sion. This highlights an oversight mechanism previous overlooked by the EU
oversight literature.
New questions emerge from our findings. First, researchers may wish to
examine the flow of information between MEPs and their national counter-
parts. What is the level of contacts between MEPs and their national parties on
issues of oversight, and to what extent do questions emerge in the national
arena and subsequently get introduced in the EP? Second, future work may
wish to examine the impact of parliamentary questions on Commission beha-
viour. To what extent does the Commission change its behaviour because of
parliamentary questions? Third, one could use content analysis techniques to
examine the oversight function of the written questions. Answering these
questions is beyond the scope of this study, but further empirical research
should address both the relationship between the EP and national parliaments
as well as the effectiveness of EP oversight mechanisms.
The findings suggest that federal parliaments more generally might consti-
tute an arena for opposition parties from constituent units to extract better
information, meaning that the activity of Members of Parliament can be
explained not only by the policy conflicts at the federal level, but also by the
partisan conflicts at the sub-federal level. Our finding is relevant for the
ongoing debate regarding the role of national parliaments in European policy
making. More power to national parliaments might actually mean that gov-
ernment parties in those parliaments have even better access to improved
control mechanisms. Our results, however, suggest that opposition parties
might have adjusted to the informational deficits regarding European affairs
that result from the national chain of delegation. Opposition parties can
acquire information and exercise oversight through their members in the EP.
Acknowledgements
A previous version of this article was presented at the European Union

Studies Association 11th Biennial Conference, 23–25 April 2009, Los Angeles,
USA.We thank Fabio Franchino, Joe Jupille, the referees and the editors of the
journal for helpful comments and suggestions. The order of authors’ names
reflects the principle of rotation. Both authors have contributed equally to all
work.
Table A-1. The Baseline Informational Model: Matching of EP Committees and Commis-
sion Portfolios (6th EP, Prodi and Barroso Commissions)
European Parliament
Committee Commissioner Portfolios
Agriculture and Rural Agriculture and Fisheries; Agriculture and Rural

Development Development
Budgetary Control Budget; Financial Programming and Budget
Budgets Budget; Financial Programming and Budget
Civil Liberties, Justice and Justice and Home Affairs; Justice, Freedom and Security
Home Affairs
Culture and Education Education and Culture; Education, Training, Culture and
Youth
Development Development and Humanitarian Aid
Economic and Monetary Economic and Monetary Affairs; Employment and Social
Affairs Affairs; Employment, Social Affairs and Equal
Opportunities
Fisheries Agriculture and Fisheries; Maritime Affairs and Fisheries
Foreign Affairs External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy;
External Relations
Industry, Research and Enterprise and Industry; Enterprise and Information
Energy Society; Relations with the EP, Transport and Energy;
Research; Science and Research
International Trade Trade
Regional Development Agriculture and Rural Development; Regional Policy
Transport and Tourism Relations with the EP, Transport and Energy; Transport
Environment, Health and Environment; Health; Health and Consumer Protection
Food Safety
Internal Market and Health and Consumer Protection; Internal Market;
Consumer Protection Internal Market and Services;
Temporary Committee on Environment
Climate Change
Temporary Committee on External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy,
CIA Prisons External Relations
Temporary Committee on Enlargement
Enlargement
Note: Committees and portfolios not mentioned are not considered.
Notes
1. Since 1999, the EP has had the right to scrutinise draft implementing measures based on
co-decision. This right enables the EP to object to measures if it believes that the
Commission has exceeded its powers. In this event, the Commission can adopt the

measures only following a one-month delay. Since 2006, the EP can actually block a
Commission proposal in co-decision and the Commission has to present a new draft
measure or a new proposal for legislation. Thus, the EP can now prevent the adoption of
an implementing act, ‘provided that the objection is legally justified’ (Schusterschitz &
Kotz 2007). However, even though the EP is now involved in the implementation
decision making, the comitology committee system as a whole remains dominated by the
Council and the Member State representatives.
2. We emphasise the Council’s legislative role in this article, but it also has executive
functions.
3. Pahre (1997) has argued that Denmark’s strong oversight committee provides the
country with a bargaining advantage in the EU compared with other Member States.
4. Denmark, as explained by Pahre (1997), would seem to be the exception here.
5. See Raunio (1996) for a more comprehensive history of parliamentary questions in the
EU.
6. Although recent rules changes have attempted to limit the number of frivolous ques-
tions meant simply to pester Commissioners.
7. The incentive may not have disappeared entirely, though. Both Bowler & Farrell (1993)
and Hix (2004) find some evidence that the type of electoral system affects MEP
behaviour.
8. This has led the EP to self-impose a rule in 2008 that all written questions must be
related to the EU’s competences and must not contain offensive language (see
www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/meps-questions-commission-filtered/article-174062).
9. Such a dyadic dataset is common in the international relations literature studying war.
The difference to our set-up is that dyads of countries appear as a panel (i.e., repeat
themselves over time), whereas our dataset contains each dyad of MEP–Commissioners
only once. An alternative approach would use national parties as the level of analysis,
and compare national party questioning of Commissioners. There are substantive and
technical reasons not to take this approach. Substantively, MEPs decide whether or not
to write questions, not national parties. Technically, we would not be able to test the
informational model at this level of aggregation.
10. We wrote a Perl script that automatically downloaded the relevant parliamentary
question data from the EP website (www.europarl.europa.eu/QP-WEB/application/
search.do).
11. Both the outgoing Prodi Commission and the Barroso Commission are included, and we
control in the statistical model for the tenure of each Commissioner. In practice, answers
to EP questions are prepared by the Commission staff and Commissioners sign off on
the answers.
12. As mentioned above, this MEP has been criticised by other MEPs for asking a vast
number of questions, prompting a reform of the mechanism by which MEPs could
submit questions to the Commission (Euractiv 2008). When he entered the EP in 2004,
he had promised to ‘to lead a guerrilla campaign to wreck the working of the European
Parliament’ (Independent 2004). His activities more generally – which were not always
limited to parliamentary activities in Brussels – led to a petition in late 2008 calling on
him to step down, citing among other things the high number of written questions in the
EP, most of which are considered to be unnecessary (see www.kilroystepdown.co.uk/).
He did not stand again in the 2009 EP elections.
13. We updated the government membership data until 2008 using the 2007 EJPR Political
Data Year Book (Bale & Van Biezen 2008).

14. The use of expert surveys to measure party positions is not uncontroversial because we
do not know how experts reach their evaluations. Here we also disregard potential
effects of the measurement uncertainty on the estimation.
15. We use the pscl package in R to estimate this model (Jackman 2008; Zeileis et al. 2008).
16. For an overview of these models, see Cameron and Trivedi (1998) and Zeileis et al.
(2008).
17. The omitted category in the model is Austria. Thus a statistically significant positive
country dummy implies that MEPs from that country are more likely to pose a question
than MEPs from Austria.
18. To calculate these predicted values, we hold all dummy variables at zero and the
remaining variables at their mean. The country dummy for Italy was set to 1 as Italian
MEPs asked just over the mean number of questions.
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European Journal of Political Research 50: 53–79, 2010 53

Parliamentary questions and oversight in the European Union ejpr_1919 53..79

SVEN-OLIVER PROKSCH1 & JONATHAN B. SLAPIN2

Abstract. Delegation in the European Union (EU) involves a series of principal-agent

The policy process in democratic political systems is one of delegation. In

In the European Union (EU), the chain of delegation is significantly more

Delegation and oversight in the European Union

Theoretical models of delegation and oversight were initially developed to

Political parties and legislative oversight

Parliaments are by no means unitary actors scrutinising the executive. In fact,

members of national parties to a national parliament. A government is then

Finally, Bergman et al. point out the extensive involvement of government

Commission and reduce informational asymmetries on EU affairs. Although

Opposition party scrutiny: Parliamentary questions in the EU

Virtually every parliamentary democracy provides Members of Parliament the

informational disadvantages in their parliaments. Moreover, establishing

Opposition Oversight Model: MEPs from national opposition parties are

Alternative explanations of parliamentary question activity

Informational Model: MEPs submit more questions to those Commission

Finally, an additional motive for asking parliamentary questions may be

nuisance questions in an attempt to waste the Commission’s time. The most

EU Scepticism Model: MEPs who are opposed to more European inte-

In sum, in addition to our primary theoretical model, the opposition oversight

Data and methods

QUESTIONSij, is the count of written parliamentary questions asked by MEPi

Table 1. Example of dyadic question dataset of MEPs and

Note: Question counts are only given as examples.

© 2010 The Author(s)

Table 2 presents some summary information for our dependent variable

Table 2. EP parliamentary questions (2004–2008): Overview

Ten most active Ten most targeted

1. Kilroy-Silk, Robert (UK, Indep. 1,527 1. Environment 3,166

01. Ireland 1.95 1. Kilroy-Silk (UK) & 405

© 2010 The Author(s)

13. Finland 0.32 7. De Rossa (IE) & Špidla 126

European Commissioners who are pro-European are more likely to receive

of a parliamentary committee with jurisdiction equivalent to that of Commis-

Table 3. EP parliamentary questions: Zero-inflated negative binomial regression

Negative binomial count model: Estimate

Opposition oversight model:

Belgium 0.540 (0.136)***

Zero-inflation logit model:

© 2010 The Author(s)

MEP and Commissioner deal with

MEP National Party

questions than government party MEPs.This distinction is clearest when MEPs

Both national governing and opposition parties have incentives to reduce

MEP and Commissioner deal with

MEP National Party

Figure 3. Effects of opposition status and EU position given portfolio incongruence on

questions of Commissioners, even after controlling for ideology and commit-

A previous version of this article was presented at the European Union

Agriculture and Rural Agriculture and Fisheries; Agriculture and Rural

Note: Committees and portfolios not mentioned are not considered.

© 2010 The Author(s)

© 2010 The Author(s)

© 2010 The Author(s)

Franchino, F. (2005). A formal model of delegation in the European Union. Journal of

© 2010 The Author(s)

© 2010 The Author(s)

© 2010 The Author(s)

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