Party Discipline in the European Parliament: Positions of Political Groups on the Green Deal Legislation

The European Parliament is a key institution in the legislative process of the European Union, and its decision-making is largely shaped by the functioning of political groups. The unity of voting within these groups results from a combination of institutional mechanisms of party discipline and the ideological cohesion of their members. These dynamics are particularly evident in the field of climate policy, which represents one of the most politicised areas of contemporary European Union politics. The aim of this bachelor's thesis is to analyse the voting cohesion of political groups in the European Parliament during the adoption of legislative proposals within the Fit for 55 package and to identify the factors that influence this cohesion. The thesis focuses on the role of the ideological positioning of political groups with regard to environmental policy and European integration, as well as on the importance of their institutional capacity to enforce party discipline. To test the proposed hypotheses, the study employs a quantitative analysis of roll-call votes in the European Parliament during the 2019- 2024 parliamentary term. Voting cohesion is measured using the Rice Agreement Index and compared with the ideological scores of political groups derived from the Chapel Hill Expert survey, as well...