New Delhi

The European Parliament (EP) possesses a highly special-ized committee system, operating in a complex institutional and political environment, yet little empirical work has inves-tigated how MEPs are assigned to EP committees and what consequences this process has for representation and policy-making. In this article I examine the growth of EP committees and committee membership since 1979, and address the question of whether these committees are repre-sentative of the EP as a whole. Using an original data set of committee membership, national and EP party affiliation, MEP characteristics, and MEP policy preferences derived from roll-call votes, I address three key questions: Does committee membership reflect the party group composition of the EP? Do committee members possess specialized expertise in their committees ’ policy areas? And, finally, do committee members ’ general or committee-specific policy preferences differ substantially from those of the overall Parliament? The results suggest very strongly that, although committee members do tend to possess policy-specific expertise, committees are, nonetheless, highly representa-tive of the EP as a whole, in terms of both party and policy representation