Search

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.

Both the European Court of Auditors (ECA) and the European Ombudsman (EO) have been coined as European Union (EU) ‘watchdogs’. They have very different mandates: the Court audits the EU’s finances and the Ombudsman investigates complaints of maladministration by EU institutions and bodies. It might then come as a surprise that they have quite a lot in common. Their main EU institution of scrutiny is the European Commission, and they need to preserve their independence as oversight institutions. Neither has the power to impose sanctions on the institutions they investigate. Both the Court and the Ombudsman also cooperate with their national counterparts. In this chapter, we shed light on these EU ‘watchdogs’, which have thus far been under-researched. We do this by examining the key features of their institutional set-up and how they work. We also analyse how they have succeeded in interpreting their role beyond legal provisions and how they have dealt with crisis.

The Lisbon Treaty gave the European Parliament extensive new powers and its consent is now required for the vast majority of EU international agreements. At the same time, national parliaments—and even regional ones—are increasingly asserting their powers over areas of European governance that were traditionally dominated by the executive. Exerting influence and conducting oversight is time-consuming, however. Particularly at the EU-level parliaments cannot influence or scrutinise every policy dossier with equal rigour. A key factor directing parliamentary attention seems to be the ‘politicisation’ of an issue. In other words, the amount of contestation and attention given to a particular issue seems to affect parliamentary activity. This thematic issue seeks to assess how politicisation affects the role parliaments play within the system of EU governance. In particular, the contributions aim to answer the over-arching question of whether politicisation has an impact on how parliaments seek to influence policy-making and hold the EU executives to account. Furthermore, we raise the question of whether and how politicisation affects the role of parliaments as arenas for contestation and communication of different political interests. Jointly, the findings provide the empirical foundations for a more comprehensive debate regarding the democratic implications of politicisation. Politicisation puts pressure on parliaments to act, but parliamentarians themselves may also find it in their interest to instigate contestation. This thematic issue addresses these questions by shedding light on both the European Parliament and national parliaments and examines different policy-fields reaching from climate change and trade, to financial affairs and the Common Fisheries Policy.

The debate on whether or not the European Union (EU) is suffering from a democratic deficit is “crowded territory.” The debate is not only far-reaching but has evolved along with the transformation of the system of European governance. In the 1990s the “standard version of the democratic deficit” was developed. This drives on the observation that EU member states have transferred powers to the supranational construction of the EU and as such these powers escape national parliamentary control. The fact that the European Parliament was a rather weak institution is seen as to further aggravate the situation. While this is, since the early 2000s, no longer seen as an adequate standard of comparison and indicator for the democratic quality of the EU, the EU democratic system is still seen to fall short on different accounts, for example when it comes both to participatory and representative democracy. This might come as a surprise, as the EU has undertaken a number of reforms especially since and by way of the Maastricht Treaty to make the EU more “democratic.” For example, the (indirect) involvement of national parliaments into EU policymaking was strengthened or the tool of the European Citizen Initiative (ECI) was introduced. As such, the debate on the democratic deficit is not only academic but takes place within the political arena. It is consequential by being mirrored in treaty changes and thus also functional. Overall these tools are seen to fall short however, at least so far. One reason seems to be expectation management. The terms used seem to be very “loaded”. For example, the notion is evoked that the Union is a representative democracy. Moreover piecemeal reform leads to different modes of representation. While some of these objectives have been achieved, for example, by providing access of certain groups to decision-making process, others are excluded, which can in fact exacerbate the democratic deficit. Overall the “traditional” debate on the democratic deficit has taken on a new quality: the context of emergence of the so-called illiberal democracies at the member state level. It has been stated already almost 20 years ago that the EU will have to invent new forms of citizenship, representation, and decision making if it is ever to democratize itself. It seems that the EU has tried to do so partially, but the use of far-reaching and normative notions and concepts is bound to fall short in a system that is in constant flux and very heterogeneous.

Enhancing the role of national parliaments in the European Union's decision-making process has for some time been a popular way in which policy-makers have sought to address legitimacy problems in the European Union, the Early Warning Mechanism being only one example. In response to these developments, an increasing number of scholars have addressed the question of how parliaments make use of these powers in practice. An important dimension of the process - the role of parliamentary officials in parliamentary scrutiny and control - has so far been neglected in the literature. Against this background, this article examines the role of the representatives of national parliaments in the European Parliament with the aim of understanding the role and the nature of this bureaucratic network'. While falling short of an epistemic community, these officials play an important role in enabling parliamentary scrutiny through the dissemination of information.

Much of the discussion about the provisions on national parliaments in the Lisbon Treaty has concerned the potential for increasing politicization and parliamentarization of European Union (EU) politics. However, a more immediate change can be expected at the domestic level, as national parliaments adapt to make effective use of these new powers. In order to approach this question systematically, this article develops a framework for the analysis of the Europeanization of national parliaments that starts from the recognition that the Lisbon changes involve an inherent dynamic towards increasing transnational interaction among parliaments as well as pressures to rely more on technical expertise and administrative support in their internal workings. The processes of transnationalization and bureaucratization are considered as key indicators that help us to identify different degrees of Europeanization of national parliaments in the EU. As a final step, the article develops a typology of national parliaments based on the assumption that the more Europeanized parliaments will tend to invest more into their administrative resources and will engage to a greater extent with other national parliaments as well as with EU-level actors. The conceptual framework developed here is designed to facilitate systematic empirical research into the Europeanization of national parliaments.

The Palgrave Handbook of National Parliaments and the European Union offers a comprehensive picture of the European activities of national parliaments in all the 28 member states of the EU. In the aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty, it questions whether national legislatures do matter in European governance. With contributions from both academics and practitioners, this volume integrates the latest constitutional and legal developments as well as the consequences of the economic crisis in every country in the EU. Special emphasis is also placed on the actual parliamentary practices relating to European affairs. In addition, the volume includes some cross-sectional entries on key issues such as parliamentary administration and inter-parliamentary cooperation. By covering a large number of aspects and cases, this collection provides a unique source for assessing the degree of actual parliamentary and democratic control of the European governance at the domestic level.

Traditionally, much of the focus of the study of politics has been on formal arrangements and formal institutions. In recent years, however, this dominant focus has given way to an increasing concern with informal aspects of politics. This can be said for both the study of comparative politics and international relations more generally and for research on governance within the European Union in particular. Against this background, the aim of this research note is, first, to review the findings of research on informal governance and, second, to explore whether analytical concepts can be applied to the EU, with the aim of bringing greater conceptual clarity to the field and identifying future research agendas in this area. In a final section, the article also addresses the normative dimension of informal governance in the EU, discussing both the benefits and the risks of such arrangements from the perspective of transparency, efficiency and democratic accountability.

The European Parliament (EP) is branded as one of the winners of the Lisbon Treaty. It has seen its role expanded to more than 40 Treaty articles and obtained the status of co-legislator in previously uncharted territory such as agriculture, fisheries and legal migration. This raises the question of how the EP adapts itself to the newly obtained powers in order to fulfill its legislative role. A very pertinent issue in this context are the type of tasks that are delegated to EP civil servants as this might have implications for the democratic legitimacy of the directly elected Members. This contribution identifies the conditions under which civil servants take up different types of tasks by looking at four cases in two different policy areas: migration and fisheries. Political importance of the dossier and expertise are identified as key determinants for the role of civil servants in the ordinary legislative procedure.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the role of parliamentary administrations in the control of European Union policy-making. It questions whether the decision to give parliaments greater powers in the aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty had only the intended effect of political debate on European policies, or whether it has also resulted in the bureaucratisation of parliaments. The authors argue that the challenges of information-management faced by parliaments lead them to delegate an extensive set of tasks to their administrations. They offer a broad empirical picture, analysing the challenges faced by national parliaments and the role and response of their administrations in the case of the European Parliament, national parliaments and regional parliaments. In addition, the book studies the interaction between different administrations and their contribution to interparliamentary cooperation. It presents a new and different perspective on the challenges and dynamics of multi-level parliamentarism. -- Introduction -- Conceptualizing the Role of Parliamentary Administrators -- Administrative Players in the European Parliament -- Transnational Bureaucratic Networks in the EU: The Role of Parliamentary Officials in Inter-Parliamentary Coordination and Control -- The Administrations of National Parliaments and the Scrutiny of EU Affairs -- The Europeanization of National Parliamentary Administrations: Convergence or Divergence? -- New Tasks, Limited Resources: Regional Parliamentary Administrations in EU Affairs -- Conclusion

The Treaty of Lisbon acknowledged the role of national parliaments in the democratic functioning of the EU and strengthened their formal involvement in EU policy-making, most notably through better information rights and the creation of the EWS. These new opportunities led to greater academic attention and contributed to a growing literature on the role of national parliaments in the EU (e.g. Hefftler et al. 2015) and the contribution that these could make in helping to address the EU’s putative ‘democratic deficit’ (Bellamy and Kroger 2013).

In light of the low participation in the elections to the European Parliament and the remaining limits on the powers of this institution, EU affairs scrutiny by national parliaments is increasingly regarded as an additional source of legitimacy for the EU. However, as national parliaments take centre stage in the debate about the need to enhance the democratic legitimacy of EU decision-making, it becomes ever more important to ask questions not only about the relationship between parliaments, on the one hand, and national governments and the EU institutions, on the other, but also to illuminate the internal processes within national parliaments and the horizontal networking among them.

In the academic literature on parliaments, as in the public debate, the main focus is usually on the party political dimension of parliamentary work: the adoption of legislation or annual budgets, the election and scrutiny of the executive and their important role in the political system as a forum for debate on key issues. Yet, in order to function as institutions and exercise their functions, parliaments also rely on administrative structures and appointed officials.

The EP is arguably the institution that has been transformed the most compared with other EU institutions. It has come a long way from an unelected assembly in the 1950s that was merely consulted by the Council, to a directly elected parliament that has achieved co-legislative equality with the Council in over 85 treaty articles.

A combination of revisions of European Treaties and national constitutional reforms have — as a general rule — led to a strengthening of parliaments in the EU since the Single European Act (Hrbek 2010). However, initially, treaty reforms primarily benefited the EP, whereas national reforms and more recent treaty reforms have also considered the role of national parliaments. European integration has thus been a particularly great challenge for regional parliaments. Regions are less well-represented in EU policy-making than member states. In addition, the dominant actors in regional interest representation, both in intrastate coordination and in Brussels, are regional governments. As a result, until the Treaty of Lisbon, the role of regional parliaments in EU policymaking was mainly limited to controlling their regional executives, which were themselves often playing a subordinated role in the EU policy processes.

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.

The EP as the only directly elected EU institution, portrays itself as the forum that is open not only to input by lobby groups but to that of ‘average’ citizens. This paper probes the contribution of the Internet in this quest to connect Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) with citizens and here specifically we examine the role of the EP's Standing Committees. The analysis is rooted within the larger debate of the possible contribution of the Internet to encouraging the development of a European public space. The discussion focuses on the use of new technologies, including interactive and non-interactive communication methods such as email and discussion fora. It attempts to generate a series of topics for further investigation by outlining some initial results from interviews, carried out at the European level.

The Lisbon Treaty has substantially extended the co-legislative rights of the European Parliament (EP). This raises the general question of how the EP organizes itself internally in order to be able to maximize its input into the legislative process. In the quest of information processing, it is likely that officials inside the EP gain in importance. The article thus aims to clarify the conditions under which these EP officials impact on the EU policy process and as such can influence policy outcomes. The analysis is based on case studies from five different policy domains. The observations reflect that under certain conditions EP officials play a steering role in the EU decision-making process. As such they can have a significant impact on the policymaking process, defying the dualistic Weberian approach according to which politicians take decisions and officials merely implement.

In the wake of the Lisbon Treaty, much of the academic debate on national parliaments in the EU has focused on the new powers of national parliaments and the potential for the politicisation and parliamentarisation of the EU. In the process, the role of administrators in the parliamentary control of EU affairs has been neglected. This article addresses that gap by comparing parliamentary administrations to a set of ideal types on the basis of in-depth interviews and a comparative survey of parliamentary staff. This leads to the observation that the roles of parliamentary administrators have been further expanded after Lisbon to a range of tasks that go beyond technical support and include elements of agenda-setting.

The role and impact of institutions on policy-making have been receiving a lot of attention in the academic literature on the European Union (EU). The current special issue aims to contribute to this broader institutionalist debate in the EU literature by paying attention to institutional dynamics within and across EU institutions and different levels of governance. In this quest, it feeds into the broader political and academic debate on (changing) institutional balance and policy coherence. The contributions to this special issue reflect that a wide range of institutional mechanisms for intra- and inter-institutional cooperation have been developed. Most importantly, the contributions allow us to get a better insight into the factors that explain the success or failure of the cooperation. This introduction to the special issue provides the backdrop for the contributions and an overview of the individual articles.

The European Parliament (EP) has been hailed as one of the ‘winners’ of the Lisbon Treaty (Mahoney, 2010). Indeed, since its entry into force, the EP is a co-legislator in almost all regulatory fields of the EU. The co-legislative powers of the EP now cover 85 Treaty articles and were extended into thus-far unchartered waters such as fisheries and the common commercial policy, to name just two examples. Moreover, what used to be the third pillar of freedom, security, and justice now falls in its entirety under the ordinary legislative procedure (OLP, formerly known as the co-decision procedure).

The European Parliament (EP) has undergone an amazing transformation since its inception in the 1950s. From an unelected Common Assembly it has become a full-fledged co-legislator together with the Council and is now directly elected by EU citizens. The Treaty of Lisbon has extended the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP) (former co-decision) to cover 85 Treaty bases and the EP is now co-legislator in thus far uncharted territory of the Common Commercial Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy to name just two.

Three levels of health indicators (1) self-reported ill-health, (2) internal health resources, and (3) external health resources were analysed in relation to a four-category house-hold income distribution in order to describe possible social gradients. The particular aim of this study was to obtain information on the association of income data with self-reported ill-health.This cross-sectional study was based on a health survey. The sample represents around 10% of the rural population of some communities in Styria, randomly selected from the population registry. Interview data was collected from 3781 participants aged 15 years and older, 1559 males and 2222 females.The results show that individuals from lower house-hold income classes are disadvantaged with regard to indicators of ill-health, internal and external health resources. Overall, the link between low income and poor health is highly consistent within our data.Considering our results we conclude that internal and external health resources are as unequally distributed over income levels as health outcome indicators.

The approach of problem-based learning (PBL) is the main teaching method within the field of European Studies at Maastricht University, at both the bachelor and master’s level. PBL is a student-centred approach in which students collaboratively – in small groups with the support of a tutor – solve problems that are presented in different assignment texts. Advocates of PBL claim that it enhances content knowledge and fosters the development of communication and problem-solving skills as well as self-directed learning.

The European Parliament (EP) has followed an impressive trajectory from being a non-elected assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community to a full-fledged co-legislator with the Council of Ministers (Council). The main instrument of Parliament’s legislative competences, the co-decision procedure, was introduced in the Treaty of Maastricht (1993) and by the beginning of this millennium was extended to 44 policy areas. Furthermore, the Lisbon Treaty has transformed co-decision into the ‘ordinary legislative procedure (OLP)’, which now covers areas as sensitive as agriculture and fisheries, freedom, security and justice and commercial policy.1

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.

This article examines the role of the standing committees in building consensus within the European Parliament (EP) and asks whether the ability to fulfil this function has remained stable even in the context of enlarged membership after the June 2004 elections. To this avail, original data have been collected on the voting behaviour in EP committees, from July 1999 through July 2006, and interviews with key players have been conducted. Findings show that committees generally work very consensually, regardless of the issue at stake and the procedure applied. At the same time, the committee system seems to be evolving towards greater differentiation across policy areas and, partially, across legislative procedures.

The national parliaments in Austria, Finland, and Sweden faced similar challenges as regards to parliamentary participation in EU affairs when their countries became EU members in 1995. They chose different institutional frameworks, where in Austria the respective legal provisions were comparatively rather strong. However, the Austrian parliament rarely makes use of its extensive formal powers but finds it difficult to select the relevant EU issues to exercise its controlling powers. Finland and Sweden, on the other hand, did not provide for such extensive room of manoeuvre for their parliaments but have been more successful in selecting important EU matters to exercise parliamentary control. Especially the Finnish solution, where the parliament focuses on issues that should have been decided by the parliament if Finland had not been a member of the EU, has proven to be particularly successful.

Osterreich ist seit dem 1. Janner 1995 Mitglied der Europaischen Union (EU). Der Beitritt wird oftmals als der bedeutendste Einschnitt betrachtet, dem sich Osterreich in der Zweiten Republik unterzog (Falkner/Muller 1998, 13). Im Zentrum des vorliegenden Kapitels steht eine Diskussion uber die Auswirkungen des EU-Beitritts auf die „Demokratiequalitat“ Osterreichs seit diesem Zeitpunkt. Dieses Unterfangen ist insofern schwierig, als die Veranderungen des demokratischen Systems Osterreichs in diesem Zeitraum 1:1 auf die Mitgliedschaft Osterreichs im Entscheidungsgefuge der Europaischen Union zuruckgefuhrt werden konnen. Dieses Kapitel wird somit einige herausragende Aspekte diskutieren, ohne den Anspruch auf Endgultigkeit und Vollstandigkeit zu erheben.

The European Parliament, as the only directly elected EU institution, portrays itself as the forum that is open not only to input by lobby groups but to that of "average" citizens. This paper probes into the contribution of the Internet in this quest of connecting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) with citizens and here specifically, we examine the role of the EP's Standing Committees. The analysis is rooted within the larger debate of the possible contribution of the Internet for encouraging the development of a European public space. The discussion focuses on the use of new technologies, including interactive and non-interactive communication methods such as email and discussion fora. It attempts to generate a series of topics for further investigation by outlining some initial results from interviews, carried out at the European level.

Cette publication n'a pas de résumé

Romania joined the European Union (EU) on 1 January 2007, but economic relations were established long before this date. In 1967, Romania was the first Central Eastern European country to establish official relations with the European Economic Community (EEC) when it signed a series of agreements on the export of food products. These agreements exempted Romania from certain taxes, while obliging it to maintain a minimum price for the products it exported to the EEC. However, the orientation of the communist regime and its frequent violations of fundamental human rights meant that diplomatic relations between Romania and the EU began only after the end of the Cold War, in particular on 1 February 1993 when an EU Association Agreement was signed. © Claudia Hefftler, Christine Neuhold, Olivier Rozenberg and Julie Smith 2015, Respective authors 2015 and Wolfgang Wessels 2015.