Revisiting the political opposition of the European Parliament: a rhetorical analysis of parliamentary speeches

This article critically revisits Peter Mair’s famous 2007 analysis of the European Parliament’s (EP) weak political opposition, examining the extent to which the Parliament serves as an arena for inter- and intra-institutional opposition in EU politics, with a specific focus on the symbolic signaling of opposition. Distinguishing between three different types of political opposition (collective, ‘majority-minority,’ ‘pro-/anti-European’), the paper examines, through a software-assisted analysis (DICTION), the plenary debates following the State of the Union address by the European Commission presidents. In particular, we investigate party group leaders’ positive and negative evaluations of the Commission’s proposals since the coming into force of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty (2009–2024). Our analysis reveals that all three forms of oppositional dynamics vis-à-vis the Commission are simultaneously present in the EP; yet they also vary over time, and traditional policy-based opposition is more pronounced than anti-system opposition.