European Foreign Policy and the European Parliament in the 1990s

The book investigates the European Parliament’s stance vis-à-vis two major events of the 1990s: the Gulf and the Yugoslav crises. In unveiling the parliamentary multi-faceted view of these events, reference has been made to the positions taken by constituent political groups and their voting behaviour. In particular, the following questions have been addressed: has the European Parliament sought to define and shape a common foreign policy with respect to the above crises? What specific functions have the European Parliament’s political groups performed? Have they succeeded to achieving an internal cohesion? Has the European Parliament overcome divisions among its member through the formation of party coalitions? Despite the considerable flow of published material on external relations of the European Union and the European Parliament, virtually no study has explored in-depth the links between two areas. The purpose of this book is to fill the gap in the existing literature, breaking new ground by combining a qualitative and quantitative analysis of parliamentary behaviour in the field of foreign policy.