Data collection

In this section, we will outline our data collection methods. We relied on different types of sources: secondary literature on parliaments, primary sources (parliamentary documents, parliamentary statistics, party programmes, discourses) and interviews. Most information for the thesis was retrieved from these sources, even though quantitative data was also gathered in order to get an overview of parliaments’ institutional framework and evolutionary trends in parliamentary activity. Prior to the conduction of interviews, we submitted an authorisation request to the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg, as well as to the Luxembourg National Commission for data protection, which was accepted after thorough review.

4.3.1 Qualitative Data

4.3.1.1 First step: identifying research gaps and key issues

Secondary sources

We used secondary literature at the beginning of the project in order to draw a picture of existing contributions in Europeanisation research and legislative studies. Sources encompassed books, conference papers and journal articles from different research fields:

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- Legislative Studies, more specifically within European Studies

- Empirical case studies retrieved from European and Legislative Studies - Public Administration literature

- Political Sociology and Political Psychology, both within European and American literature

- Methods guidebooks in Political Science - New-institutionalist literature

Primary sources

We assessed parliaments’ participation rights thanks to several sources summed up in the following table:

Table 7: Used primary sources

European legal bases

European treaties Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, Treaty of Lisbon, European Stability Mechanism, Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU

National legal bases

National Constitutions - Austria: Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz - Finland: Suomen perustuslaki

- Luxembourg: Constitution du Grand-Duché du Luxembourg

Parliaments’ Rules of Procedures - Austria: Geschäftsordnung des Nationalrates - Finland: Parliament’s Rules of Procedure - Luxembourg: Règlement de la Chambre des Députés

National information laws / Memorandum on cooperation between parliament and government

- Austria: ESM-Informationsordnung, Informationsordnungsgesetz (InfOG), Informationsverordnung (InfoV), EU- Informationsgesetz

- Finland: /

- Luxembourg: Aide-mémoire sur la coopération entre la Chambre des Députés et le Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg en matière de politique européenne (Annexe 3, Règlement de la Chambre des Députés)

Parliamentary documents

Minutes of committee meetings All selected committees involved in the negotiation process of EU treaties and intergovernmental treaties on the EMU

Minutes of plenary sessions All relevant plenary sessions dealing with EU treaties and intergovernmental treaties on the EMU

Committee reports All relevant committee reports dealing with EU treaties and intergovernmental treaties on the EMU Opinions from the civil society (trade unions,

professional chambers)

All relevant opinions dealing with EU treaties and intergovernmental treaties on the EMU

Other

Newspaper articles All relevant national newspaper articles handling EU and intergovernmental treaties or parliaments’ behaviour towards EU treaties

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In the following chapters, primary sources will be cited directly in the foonotes instead of being included in the main bibliography.

4.3.1.2 Second step: Identifying key players

After we obtained an overall view on the state of the art in the Europeanisation literature and the formal competences of each parliament, we sought to identify key players in each chamber in order to conduct interviews. Before examining parliamentary documents, we tried to reach all MPs from the three chambers with a designed survey mixing both qualitative and quantitative indicators.

Survey

The first step of the empirical research took the form of an online survey sent to current parliamentarians from each studied legislature. The objective of this survey was to obtain preliminary information on their parliamentary work, with a special focus on European affairs, and thus to identify those MPs actively involved in these matters. The answers given to the survey were meant to determine future interviews with those members of parliament identified as involved in European affairs, especially during negotiations on the Treaty of Lisbon, the ESM and the TSCG. The universal design and the question wording aimed to facilitate the administration of the survey to all current and former MPs from the three parliaments. A French and German adapted version were sent to the MPs from the Luxembourg Chambers of Deputies; a German version to the MPs from the Austrian National Council and an English version to the MPs from the Finnish Eduskunta. The survey mixed quantitative and qualitative oriented questions (both open-ended and closed questions), but its design aimed to be mainly qualitative. The quantitative-oriented questions helped to accelerate the filling of the questionnaire. Participants could skip questions according to their answers. The invitation mail was sent to each MP individually between the 07th and 9th June 2016. The personalised mail contained a description of the project and explanations on the survey’s objectives and duration. The survey could be filled in in different ways: either online through the survey platform “Typeform” by clicking on a link inserted in the mail; or by filling in the PDF document converted into a fillable form and translated into French, German and English. In addition to the PDF document that was attached to the invitation mail, an information sheet and consent letter were also added, summarising the context and aim of the research, as well as informing the participants about their rights in the framework of the project (guarantee of anonymity, possibility to end the participation at any time). The confidentiality and anonymity clause was repeated in the online survey, in the mail and in the PDF document. Although the survey itself contained questions on personal details, such as party affiliation and names, the participants were guaranteed absolute confidentiality through an anonymisation process that was undertaken afterwards to exclude any identification. The personal information merely served practical and organisational purposes, namely the identification of MPs actively involved in European Affairs, especially during the negotiations on the Treaty of Lisbon, the ESM and the TSCG.

The survey turned out to be a challenge for different reasons: firstly, we could not reach former parliamentarians because of the absence of contact details on the parliaments’ webpages.

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While in Austria, information about former MPs’ profiles was more complete, no information could be found for the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies and the Finnish Eduskunta. The answers were thus limited to current MPs. Secondly, the response rate turned out to be very low, especially in Austria and Finland, despite a second e-mail reminder. In the end, we decided to drop this method and to pick out all key players from parliamentary documents related to EU treaties and intergovernmental treaties on the EMU.

Parliamentary documents

The examination of specific parliamentary documents related to each studied treaty enabled the identification of current and former parliamentarians involved directly or indirectly in negotiations. Documents produced by parliamentary administrations, committees and parties served as a useful basis.

While documents outlining the legal bases for parliamentary involvement in EU affairs helped understanding the institutional framework, the second category of documents helped identifying key players for future interviews. Parliamentarians who contributed to negotiations on one or several of these EU-treaties were identified either in parliamentary documents (mainly for the Luxembourgish case), or thanks to legislatures’ openly accessible databases containing the names of parliamentarians from previous legislative periods (Austria and Finland). We first searched for all the documents mentioning the names and functions of parliamentarians who were directly involved in EU-treaty negotiations. These documents were found on the websites of the respective legislatures. The website of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies has a section dedicated to archived documents, where we could access different types of documents by typing key words and selecting specific timeframes related to the European treaties investigated in our thesis42. Documents from the period preceding 2006 were consulted on the spot in the archives of the chamber. On the Austrian National Council’s website, we first searched in the news section (“Parlamentskorrespondenz”) and then expanded our research to the archives section of the parliament, where we found committee and plenary session protocols. Document research on the Eduskunta’s website was more difficult due to language issues. The English version of the parliament’s website does not show the archives section. Therefore, we had to activate the “Google translate” option on the website to identify the relevant sections. We then retrieved all the necessary documents translated in English.

Types of documents found on each website were the following ones: committee reports, minutes of committee meetings, minutes of plenary sessions, opinions produced by diverse state actors to the parliament, summaries of treaty negotiations on news websites such as Europaforum.public.lu, questions, motions, interpellations, parliamentary blogs such as the “Parlamentskorrespondenz” of the Austrian National Council43_{. All these documents were}

dealing with the studied treaties. We collected the names of key players (MPs) found in the 42 _See

http://chd.lu/wps/portal/public/!ut/p/b1/04_SjzQyNTM3N7Y0M9OP0I_KSyzLTE8syczPS8wB8aPM4l2MXMK CPE2MDNzNA00MjLxcvcxDg_2M3S1BGiKBCgxwAEcDVP3-

rsFmBkbGAcaOQcFGQHkTqH4jC4vgIHdHX1dLy1AnA08DZ8Ng10AnIwNPI-Lsx2MBAf1-

Hvm5qfq5UTlubhaOigAT4awH/dl4/d5/L2dJQSEvUUt3QS80SmtFL1o2XzI4SEhBTkVUMkdPTEUwQVVEO EtKMFAxR0g1/ [last accessed on 24.05.2019]

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documents and summarised in an Excel sheet the most important information about them (party affiliation, committee membership, length of mandate, involvement during EU and intergovernmental treaty negotiations, etc). Then, we prioritised key players according to the number of times they participated in discussions on the treaties. Contact details of current MPs were retrieved from the parliaments’ websites. However, contact details of former MPs’ were more difficult to find. The Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies does not display the names of former MPs on its website. Former MPs’ profiles can still be found on the Eduskunta’s and National Council’s websites, but not their contact details. We contacted former MPs either through simple search on the internet, or by contacting the secretariat of their respective political parties.

4.3.1.3 Third step: Conducting Interviews

As a first step, we designed three interview grids, one for parliamentarians, one for civil servants from EU secretariats and one for parliamentary group collaborators. We designed the questions according to the information retrieved from parliamentary documents and our list of explanatory factors. We divided the grid destined for MPs into four main sections: the first section focuses on MPs’ motivations to get involved in EU affairs; the second section deals with their working methods during negotiations on the four studied treaties; the third section handles potential evolutions of their parliamentary practices after EU-treaty negotiations and the last section focuses on their perception of European integration and the role of their parliament in EU affairs. The second interview grid destined for civil servants contains three sections, concentrating on the working methods of the parliamentary administration with regard to EU affairs, the staff’s role during treaty negotiations and finally some information about important institutional reforms undertaken by their parliament.

We decided to start the interviews with civil servants from the parliamentary administrations in order to obtain background information on working methods in EU affairs. We contacted in parallel all the parliamentarians listed in our Excel table, starting with Luxembourg in January and February 2017, continuing with Austria in March 2017 and Finland between January and May 2018. We led most interviews face-to-face. Few were conducted via telephone or answered in written form due to distance and time related issues. We recorded all interviews with the participants’ prior consent. Each participant got an information letter itemising our research objectives and framework prior to the interview. Before the interview (or after in case of non-face-to-face interviews), participants received a consent form that had to be signed both by the interviewee and the interviewer. The consent form explained the rules of data protection as requested by the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg. Further contacts were obtained thanks to the snowball sampling method, which consists in asking the interviewees about information on other known key players and eventually their contact details. Overall, we conducted 58 interviews, distributed among the different actor categories (MPs, civil servants and group collaborators).

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Table 8: Summary of conducted interviews

Austria Finland Luxembourg TOTAL

Current MPs (last legislative period until 2015) 10 2 8 20 Former MPs 5 4 6 15 Civil servants, parliamentary administration 5 2 4 11 Group collaborators 2 4 2 8

Other (trade union organisations, etc)

0 1 3 4

TOTAL 22 13 23 58

Source: Own calculations

4.3.2 Quantitative data

Our research is mainly qualitative-oriented, but we decided to rely on some quantitative measurements to underpin our arguments and crosscheck arguments from interviewees. Quantitative data on parliamentary activity and parliamentarians’ profiles provided us with an overview of parliaments’ institutional features and evolutionary trends in the handling of EU affairs since 2004. The evolution of parliamentary involvement in EU affairs can best be measured by assessing used parliamentary tools over the period running from 2004 to 2013. By parliamentary tools, we mean the proportion of parliamentary questions, motions, interpellations, plenary debates and opinions on EU topics; the number of meetings of the respective European Affairs Committees compared to meetings of specialised committees per legislative year and legislative period since the early 2000s. All this data was retrieved from yearly parliamentary reports and parliaments’ websites (digital archives). We had to count most data manually, because parliamentary statistics do not separate between EU and non-EU matters. While we found easily debates on EU topics on the webpage of the Austrian National Council, they were less accessible for the other chambers. Parliamentary questions on EU affairs had to be counted manually in all cases. Their link to EU matters was identified in their title. When the overall number of questions was not too significant, like in Luxembourg, we counted them individually. However, when the number was too high, like in Austria, we proceeded with key words (for example EU, Europe, European, Parliament, Presidency, Council, directive, Lisbon Strategy, Europe 2020, European Commission). This method allowed counting the proportion of questions on EU affairs in relation to the total number of parliamentary questions during a legislative year and a legislative period.