The European Parliament in EC external Relations, From the Inception of European Political Cooperation to the Single European Act

European Political Cooperation represented one of the most innovative and yet vagueand contested areas of cooperation among EC Member States. As an intergovern‐mental practice that left no room for supranational institutions, it did not contemplateany formal role for the European Parliament (EP). Focusing on the EP and EPC afterthe 1979 elections, this article aims at making three points. First, it argues that directelections gave the EP stronger political arguments to claim more powers but parlia‐mentary demands on EPC were not different from those emerged already in the earlySeventies. Second, given Member States’ resistance to parliamentary pressures, theEP developed some original initiatives in international affairs, in order to undermine the intergovernmental features of EPC. Parliamentary actions were particularly ef‐fective on human rights issues. Finally, it points out that with the signing of the SingleEuropean Act, the role of the EP in foreign affairs remained, at best, limited.