ABSTRACT
The fact that France held the Presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2022 had important implications for the role of the French parliament in the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). The two French chambers, National Assembly, and the Senate, were responsible for fostering consensus among the 27 national parliaments regarding the CoFoE’s final recommendations. This chapter aims to delve deeper into this challenge by analysing the strategies employed by the French parliamentary representatives to garner support for the Conference’s outcomes among national parliamentarians. To this end, an actor- and process-oriented approach is applied that zooms into the political agenda and agency of the two Co-Chairs of the French parliamentary delegation to the CoFoE: JeanFrançois Rapin, Chairman of the Senate’s European Affairs Committee (EAC), and Pieyre Alexandre Anglade, Vice-Chairman of the National Assembly’s EAC. The findings elucidate why the CoFoE was only partially a success for the French parliament, pointing to the strategically important, yet unexploited potential of inter-parliamentary cooperation in the European Union.
