National Interest in the European Parliament: Voting Homogeneity of Slovak Members of the European Parliament

Abstract

This paper analyses the voting behavior of all Slovak members of the European Parliament since 2004 when Slovakia entered the EU until June 2022. Scholarly work has shown that MEP’s voting behavior is traditionally driven mainly by political party group membership and not by national origin. Nationality still has its importance, however only a secondary one in MEP’s voting decisions. Our aim is to identify policy areas where Slovak MEPs tend to vote similarly on a national basis. We applied the agreement index formula on every roll-call vote of the European Parliament during 2004 - 2022 for Slovak MEPs and sort them into policy area categories. Results showed the highest voting cohesion in international trade, budget, and regional development. The lowest voting cohesion was demonstrated in gender equality, petitions, and development. In general, the economic policy areas tend to have higher voting cohesion of Slovak MEPs than other policy areas. This paper opens up a set of questions for further research about the causes of the voting behavior of Slovak MEPs.