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Since the Lisbon Treaty National Parliaments (NPs) can play a formal role in the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP). One of the complexities of this legislative process is that the formal decisions are pre-negotiated in informal trilogues between the Council, the European Parliament (EP) and the European Commission. NPs have no role to play in trilogues, and have difficulties accessing information discussed in trilogue meetings, hindering MPs to hold their national government to account for decisions made in the Council. This article explores whether NPs monitor trilogue negotiations, and, if so, how and why do they do this. The empirical material is collected through semi-structured interviews with actors from several NPs and a content analysis of debates in two Member States. The results show that NPs operate in a formal and informal institutional context, both at the EU and national level. These institutional arrangements are used by MPs to lower costs of collecting information on trilogue negotiations in order to be able to hold the government to account and to steer the negotiation position of the government in the direction of their own policy positions. However, the increased attention for trilogue negotiations by NPs cannot alleviate the phenomenon of domestic de-parliamentarization.

When do parliaments debate European Union policies? Normative arguments suggest that debates enhance government accountability. Others warn of government bias, declining debate near elections, and parties avoiding Eurosceptic publics. Our conclusions are more differentiated. We argue that rank-and-file parliamentarians rather than leaders initiate debates. Political incentives guide their debate selection towards salient policies in the countries in which voters care most. However, where the motivation Eurosceptic publics provide and institutions facilitating rank-and-file agenda-setting are lacking, EU law-making and European Council priorities will raise little parliamentary attention. Analysis of original data, using a Bayesian and multilevel framework, lends credibility to our views. Claims of a government bias, election effects, or trends towards more debate are unlikely to hold in all countries.

Scholars interested in the role of national parliaments in the EU legislative process hardly paid attention to the differences in scrutiny between Upper Houses of EU member states. It is hypothesized in this article that structural differences between bicameral systems can explain differences between Upper Houses in scrutiny of EU legislative proposals. The hypotheses are assessed with a qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates in the Dutch and British Upper Houses on the scrutiny of EU directives agreed upon through the ordinary legislative procedure in the period 2000–2010. The empirical findings indicate that differences in the set-up of bicameral systems can only in part explain the variation in ex ante scrutiny. Moreover, in both the British and Dutch bicameral systems, MPs of the Upper and Lower Houses most of the time do not contradict each other on substantive grounds when the same EU legislative acts are scrutinized. The results also show that the scrutiny by Upper Houses imp...

This study investigates how members of parliament (MPs) of opposition parties in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands go public with information on the performance of national policies from six open methods of coordination (OMCs), and to what extent country differences in the set-up of parliamentary systems matter in this context. The empirical findings indicate that Dutch MPs use more information from OMC reports to shame the incumbent government than do British MPs. In both parliaments these shaming activities take place primarily in committee meetings and have no link with newspaper coverage on OMCs. Activities of MPs aimed at going public with information from OMC reports established only a weak link between OMCs and the citizens in European Union member states.

This study aims to bring together insights from scholars working on the ordinary legislative procedure with research on national parliaments and European Union (EU) affairs. It is assumed that members of national parliaments – when choosing directives in negotiation at the EU level in need of scrutiny – are confronted with variation in information processing costs, as well as in benefits in terms of policy influence and votes. Hypotheses are formulated on how the cost–benefit calculus can influence the scrutiny of directives agreed upon through the ordinary legislative procedure. An analysis of parliamentary activity in the Dutch and British lower houses on 293 directives indicates that directives which are longer in negotiation at the EU level, on which explanatory memoranda are published, receive media attention and are concluded without informal trilogues in second/third reading, are more scrutinized.

In parliamentary debates, members of a national parliament (MPs) often refer to the policy experiences of other countries addressing similar problems to those with which the MPs are confronted. When MPs make such references, the diffusion of policy ideas from one country context to another can occur. This article explores policy diffusion in plenary debates by answering the following questions: to what extent do references by MPs to the policies of other countries change over time and across policy areas; and what are the country- and policy-specific drivers of, respectively, the number of references to other countries and how MPs use information on policy experiences from other country contexts? The results of the analysis of Dutch Lower House debates on education and environmental policies for the period 1995–2012 show that the cross-national diffusion of policy ideas by MPs follows a punctuated equilibrium logic. Moreover, Dutch MPs refer more often to policies of larger countries and of EU member states. Finally, in policy fields with a high likelihood of externalities, the diffusion of policy ideas from the three countries most referred to by MPs occurs mainly through the mechanism of interdependence.

This article answers the question of which EU-level characteristics of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) are most likely to result in pressure on national governments to reconsider their policies as a result of OMC-related parliamentary activities and media coverage. On the basis of interviews with European Commission officials and an analysis of parliamentary debates in committee meetings and newspaper coverage on six OMCs in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in the period 1996–2009, three characteristics are selected and their empirical relevance assessed. The findings indicate that, when an OMC is adopted in a policy field without any other type of EU-level activity already present, or does not include indicators/benchmarks or peer learning activities, the OMC will not increase the pressure on a national government.

Since the introduction of the co-decision procedure by way of the Maastricht Treaty, the procedure has been transformed considerably. One of the most striking innovations is the possibility to adopt a legislative act in first reading. This article aims to answer the questions whether the increasing use of this fast track procedure is in line with Treaty provisions and/or intra/inter-institutional rules, and what the effects are of these stipulations. The empirical findings presented in this study indicate that two reasons for taking the fast track gain dominance in the practical political process, ie the political priorities of the Council and European Parliament (EP) and whether these actors consider a legislative file as urgent. From a study of two directives, it becomes clear that this dominance of factors has consequences for the type of early agreement reached (first or early second), the quality of the adopted legislation and its implementation at the national level.

This article focuses on one of the more elaborate new modes of governance in function in the EU context — the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) — and examines its varying degree of institutionalization on policy fields. Three explanations for differences in institutionalization of OMCs are tested through a comparative study of two OMCs adopted in policy fields related with the knowledge-based society theme. The empirical findings indicate that the institutionalization of an OMC can be best explained by a particular constellation of member-state preferences, in combination with a catalytic role of the European Commission.

The Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) promises to involve a broad range of actors, including members of national parliaments. Several scholars showed that the OMC breaks this promise by affecting the national policy-making process outside of the control of national parliaments. However, this finding can be called into question; scholars drew heavily on anecdotal evidence and did not take sufficiently into account differences between OMCs and member states. This article empirically investigates the use of three OMCs by parliamentarians in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to assess the performance of national policies related to the knowledge-based society theme. It will be shown that the use of information from OMCs by parliamentarians is dependent on the information provided by the government on the policies OMCs touch upon and the presence of simple benchmarks in an OMC. Moreover, parliamentarians in a consensus democracy use the OMC more frequently.

The role of national parliaments in European integration is a topical issue in current political and academic debates. This article aims to contribute to these debates by formulating three hypotheses on the differences in parliamentary scrutiny between member states. It is hypothesised that due to differences in the structure of political systems, the British and Dutch Upper and Lower House hold their respective governments to account in different ways. The hypotheses will be discussed in light of empirical findings on the EU regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation, and restriction of chemical substances (REACH). The empirical evidence provides a mixed picture with regard to these claims.