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The European Parliament is known for its culture of compromise. In that context, it would be tempting to consider emotional discourses as a democratic anomaly that would reveal the influence of radical right populist parties at the supranational level. Based on a qualitative analysis of debates on asylum in the ongoing term (2019–2024), this article offers a critical assessment of this argument. It makes two main claims. First, it shows that emotions are not specific to radical right parties, but rather are a normal phenomenon that permeates the whole negotiation process. Second, it argues that taking emotions into consideration allows us to improve our understanding of the dynamics of European-level negotiations, which have often been described as hard to penetrate due to their high level of technicity. However, this attention to emotions should not be limited to the situations where they are the most visible, or else it risks reproducing the narrative of crisis and exceptionality identified above. Researchers must also examine the way emotionality can be wilfully “limited” by speakers, as this constitutes one of the key repertoires of political hegemony in negotiations.