Transnationella listor för val till Europaparlamentet : - Ett botemedel mot EU:s demokratiska underskott, eller ett försök att skapa ett Europas förenta stater?

Abstract The aim of this article is to examine how members of the European Parliament (MEPs) framed the debate on the introduction of transnational lists for the elections to the European Parliament. Transnational lists would allow candidates on a list to be elected from the Union as a single constituency, unlike today, where the member states are divided into separate constituencies. Previous research has mainly focused on an older, similar piece of legislation, introduced by former liberal MEP Andrew Duff, or performed minor empirical tests on how citizens would react to transnational lists being implemented. Hence, I aim to fill a gap in the existing literature and provide a deeper understanding of the subject, as well as how political actors position themselves against each other while debating this. I watched three separate debates in the European Parliament on the subject and transcribed every speech from the debates and created a coding schedule (available on request at john.hultengard (at) Hotmail.com), where I could code each speech as being pro, against or not taking a stance on the issue. By using a frame analysis and a qualitative text analysis as methods, I was able to find an overarching pattern, where I discovered that the EPP, ECR, ENF and non-partisan MEPs joined forces against the Greens, ALDE and S&D, where the first coalition eventually came to win the vote on the issue. The pro-block tended to argue that there is a lack of a public sphere in the EU, and that the transnational lists would be a solution to this issue. The opponents of the idea claimed that transnational lists would weaken the link between citizens and elected MEPs, and hence the solution was to not introduce transnational lists. The two main political groups, EPP and S&D, experienced major internal divisions on the issue. Further research on this subject is necessary to give a clearer picture of the debate. Key words: Transnational lists, European Parliament, party groups, AFCO, democratic deficit, frame analysis