New Parliament, New Cleavages after the Eastern Enlargement? The Conflict over the Services Directive as an Opposition between the Liberals and the Regulators

Abstract: This article analyses the parliamentary debates and decision-making related to the highly contentious EU directive on services. It is intended as a contribution to the academic debate on political conflict lines in the European Parliament. Our argument is that neither the left-right cleavage nor a territorial one (old versus new Member States) can fully explain conflict at stake on socio-economic issues. Rather, what we can observe is cross-cutting opposition between `regulators' and `liberals'.