ABSTRACT
The European People’s Party and Socialist parliamentary groups in the European Parliament from 1979 to 1999: a comparison of two processes This chapter wishes to examine the discursive practices of the European Parliament (EP) and verify if a ‘political rhetoric’ exists, in a period particularly significant in the history of this European institution. By analysing the parliamentary records, and, more specifically, the speeches delivered during the plenary sessions, this chapter aims at examining the positions expressed by the two main political groups in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Socialist Group, on several specific steps in terms of institutional reform of the European Community/Union, focussing in particular on those MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) whose discursive practices seemed to express their personal political positions and that of their parliamentary groups more clearly. The focus of the analysis will be on the political language in parliamentary speeches, in order to understand how the use of a certain semantic may have helped to define or to manifest the position of the main political groups regarding the idea of Europe and the degree of consensus on its integration.1
