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Redirecting national parliaments: Setting priorities for involvement in EU affairs

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

While national parliaments in the European Union have learned to internalize new opportunities for influence given to them by the Lisbon Treaty, European integration has evolved and places ever more serious demands and constraints on domestic legislatures. Following the euro crisis, key decisions about national macro-economic policies are taken in the European Council and the European Semester. These are the issues traditionally at the heart of both democratic governance and citizens’ concerns. Relating these developments to the key functions national parliaments ought to perform, we develop the normative argument that a redirection of national parliaments’ resources away from less salient matters and particularly the Early Warning Mechanism towards the European Council and European economic governance would be welcome.

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Notes

  1. EWM and more broadly the upgrading of the role of national parliaments by the Lisbon Treaty have generated quite a lot of academic interest. However, given that the Lisbon Treaty has only been in force since late 2009, understandably the findings of this literature are quite tentative (see particularly Cooper, 2012, 2013, 2015; Kiiver, 2012; Cygan, 2013; Bellamy and Kröger, 2014; Gattermann and Hefftler, 2015; Jančić, 2015). As these new rights of national parliaments were already included in the Constitutional Treaty, there was academic commentary on these reforms before the Lisbon Treaty entered into force, with most of these publications rather sceptical of the EWM (for example, Raunio, 2005, 2007; Rittberger, 2005, pp. 181–192; Kiiver, 2006, pp. 153–168; Barrett, 2008b).

  2. The function of recruiting, socializing and training ministers does not apply directly to EU affairs, as domestic legislatures do not recruit or elect members of the Commission or the persons for any positions in the EU institutions. On the other hand, the EU has introduced a new dimension to the activity of national parliaments by facilitating more active interparliamentary networking, both bilateral – between individual parliaments or between a national parliament and the EP – and multilateral, with the latter exercised mainly through COSAC (The Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union). The EWM fosters interparliamentary contacts, as it requires coordination among the 28 national parliaments to meet the thresholds for yellow and orange cards (Pintz, 2014; Cooper, 2015). While approaching parliamentary functions from somewhat different perspectives, Raunio (2011) and Sprungk (2013) provide more elaborate discussions of the functions of national parliaments in EU politics.

  3. Obviously one can argue that such a dichotomous approach to parliamentary functions is arbitrary or too simplistic, especially as MPs are basically always representing citizens in their work. For example, MPs can be considered to be representing their constituents when scrutinizing EU legislation in the EACs. Alternatively one can argue that plenary debates should be seen primarily as form of government scrutiny as opposed to linking with citizens and aggregating their interests. Similar problems, however, exist with other categorizations. Notably, given the increasing involvement of the executive in preparing legislative proposals, the functions of controlling government and of legislating have practically become indistinguishable.

  4. For example, according to Kiiver (2012) the real added value of the EWM lies in the justification it requires the Commission to provide for legislative proposals. Cooper (2006, 2012) has also stressed the interaction between national parliaments and the Commission, with both sides engaging in constructive argumentation or deliberation about EU governance.

  5. According to Cooper (2013), the EWM implies that the EU is now a ‘tricameral’ system, with the ‘real’ virtual third chamber co-existing alongside the Council and the EP. An alternative view is provided by Winzen (2013a) who does not see the mechanism as a form of interparliamentary cooperation. According to Winzen national parliaments agreed to the EWM because, apart from being completely voluntary, it in fact is compatible with practices of domestic oversight and can be carried out as part of the normal EU scrutiny process.

  6. Apart from Miklin (2013), who indicates that interparliamentary networking has improved government scrutiny in Austria, we are not aware of any empirical studies linking interparliamentary cooperation to government control.

  7. We are not denying that EWM matters can be less technical and more salient, particularly for individual parties. For example, Monti II was certainly salient for many centre-left parties with close ties to trade unions.

  8. We acknowledge that both European level treaties and national constitutions do provide national parliaments rather strong participation rights in euro crisis or euro area decision making, with the Fiscal Compact even including an interparliamentary conference (Article 13 conference). However, as is the case with overall scrutiny of EU affairs, strong constitutional rights do not necessarily produce strong engagement or control.

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Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the TU Dresden International Politics colloquium, January 2014 and the first PADEMIA annual conference in Brussels, June 2014. The authors thank all the participants at those events for their comments.

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Correspondence to Tapio Raunio.

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de Wilde, P., Raunio, T. Redirecting national parliaments: Setting priorities for involvement in EU affairs. Comp Eur Polit 16, 310–329 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2015.28

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