Marginalised Britain? Positions and Influence of UK Actors in EU Decision-Making

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Lord Lawson, writing in the The Times in May 2013, argued that:"Not only do our interests increasingly differ from those of the eurozone members but, while never 'at the heart of Europe' ... we are now becoming increasingly marginalised as we are doomed to being consistently outvoted by the eurozone bloc" (Nigel Lawson, "I'll be Voting to Quit the EU", The Times, 7 May 2013)With the core project of the EU now deepening EMU and building political union alongside EMU, many share Lord Lawson's fear of UK marginalisation in this "new EU". For example, the defeat of the UK on the cap on bankers' bonuses is often cited as a case of "Eurozone caucusing" against British interests. Nevertheless, other analysts argue that now that the infrastructure for saving the Euro has been built, the EU is back to its core business of strengthening and reforming the single market. In this project, British actors - ministers, MEPs, and the new UK Commissioner - are part of the EU mainstream and perhaps even "leading from the front" in building support for reform and further liberalisation of the single market.So, the key question for the Fellowship is: has the UK become more or less marginalised in EU decision-making over the past 10 years?To answer this question I will look carefully at the empirical evidence relating to the positions and influence of UK "actors" in EU decision-making between 1 July 2004 and 31 December 2015. The project will look at the behaviour and influence of UK ministers in the Council, UK officials in COREPER, UK MEPs, and UK parties in the European Parliament. I will use my own existing research and data (on voting in the Council and European Parliament), and will supplement these with data from a large number of sources as well as existing research by other political scientists. The project aims to assess a number of issues, including: how often have UK actors been on the winning or losing side in the EU legislative process; whether the patterns of influence and power of UK actors, relative to the actors from other member states, have varied across policy issues; and whether there has been an emerging Eurozone (plus "pre-ins") caucus, in general or on specific policy issues (such as financial services, justice and home affairs etc.).The project will use a range of advanced analytical techniques, such as scaling of recorded votes in the Council and European Parliament to identify the "distances" between UK actors and the average members of the Council, the European Parliament, and the key political groups in the EP. The project will also look at several key legislative case studies of apparent UK "marginalisation", such as the cap on bankers' bonus, and will assess whether the patterns in these cases can be generalised.The results of the project will be disseminated through outputs aimed at policymakers, the media, opinion multipliers, and the wider public. The project will produce a major policy report summarising the key findings. During the project I will write 10 blog articles (one on each of the key elements of the project) on the LSE's EUROPP and the British Politics and Policy blogs, the ESRC's UK-EU website and will try to have several of these pieces syndicated on The Guardian blog (the LSE BPP blog has an on-going agreement with The Guardian). I will also promote the policy report and the blog pieces by social media, via my own Twitter account (with c.6,000 followers) as well as the LSE Government Department and VoteWatch accounts.The project will organise an off-the-record briefing for UK policy-makers, where the policy report will be presented and discussed. There will also be a high-profile public event at LSE: a public roundtable debate, where the key findings in the policy report will be presented and discussed with politicians and/or policy-makers from the main political parties in the UK as well as from several other EU member states.