In this chapter, our aim is to provide some essential background material for understanding the argument and evidence we present in the rest of the book. We focus on three aspects of the story of the European Parliament: (1) the main powers of the institution and how these have changed; (2) how the political parties and the party system in the European Parliament have evolved; and (3) why the ‘electoral connection’ from citizens to MEPs remains rather weak despite six rounds of European Parliament elections. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ‘roll-call votes’ in the European Parliament, which is the data we use in the rest of the book to understand how politics inside the European Parliament has changed. Roll-call votes are votes where the voting decision of each MEP is recorded. The roll-call voting records are published in the annexes to the minutes of the plenary sessions of the European Parliament. Nowadays, they can also be found on the website of the European Parliament.

1.1 Powers of the European Parliament

The precursor to the modern European Parliament was the ‘Assembly’ of the European Coal and Steel Community, which held its first meeting on 10 September 1952.