The Europeanization of Parliamentary Attention in and out of the European Union France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland Compared

This chapter adds to the growing literature on the Europeanization of national parliaments by looking at how and to what extent members of parliament (MPs) use parliamentary questions (PQs) on EU-related affairs. Relying on a comparison of three EU member states (France, Spain, and the Netherlands) and Switzerland, we analyze the Europeanization of parliamentary attention from a policy agenda perspective. We formulate expectations regarding variations in the degree of Europeanization across time, countries, and issues, and we test them with descriptive statistics on a rich collection of data covering three decades and including thousands of PQs. Results show that national MPs devote only little attention to EU-related issues, with no increase over time. Issue concentration of PQs is high and has not decreased over time either. Overall, the results tend to underscore the apathy of national MPs on EU matters.