The party political make-up of EU legislative bodies

Abstract: This research note provides an overview of the party political make-up of EU legislative bodies for the period 1979-2004 (Commission: 1979-2007) in terms of the left-right and pro-/anti-Europe dimensions. The various methods of measuring political positions are discussed and compared. Measures for the left-right dimension based on party manifestos and expert surveys are relatively strongly correlated for the time period. This is not the case for the pro-/anti-Europe dimension. The dataset is available via the homepage of the European Legislative Politics Research Group.