Party‐political contestation of European trade policy: an analysis of roll call votes in the European Parliament

Abstract

We examine the dimensionality of the EU external relations space by analysing trade policy votes in the European Parliament (1999–2019). As it contains the EU's full geographical and ideological diversity, the European Parliament is an important laboratory for testing expectations about what predicts divisions over trade policy. We find that Members of the European Parliament's (MEP's)s voting behaviour is most strongly structured along the left/right dimension. In addition, the degree of environmentalism of MEPs' parties structures voting patterns on trade. Even though there has been a lot of attention on the relationship between trade and the rise of the populist radical right, we find no evidence that trade votes divide nationalist from cosmopolitan parties. Moreover, though the political groups in the European Parliament (EP) include members from a wide range of constituencies that differ on macroeconomic indicators, differences between constituencies in terms of employment or education level do not meaningfully structure MEPs' voting.