The European Parliament and the origins of new policy fields: a creative political laboratory in the long 1970s

Contributing to the growing literature about post-war European
democracy in transnational and comparative perspective, this article
explores the role of the European Parliament in pushing the European
Community to engage in new transnational policy fields in the long
1970s. Based on a wide range of archival sources, parliamentary debates
and media coverage, it compares three then new issue areas and policy
fields with limited or no explicit legal foundations in the original treaties:
social policy, the environment, and consumer policy. Although the EP was
not directly elected until 1979, had no legislative decision-making role
and only limited budgetary powers, we show that MEPs were nevertheless
able to help politicize issues and co-shape the trajectories of policy
Europeanization. They did so chiefly by exercising entrepreneurial
leadership, creating horizontal and vertical networks and alliances,
devising innovative institutional strategies, and through working with the
media to push for European solutions to transnational problems.