National parliaments and European constitutionalism: accountability beyond borders

Abstract

The structure and quality of EU democracy is greatly determined by the status that the European Union accords both to the European Parliament and to national parliaments. The potential that national parliaments carry for providing political accountability and democratic legitimacy to the EU decision-making processes in various fields of action has long been neglected. This study explores the role of national parliaments not only as actors of their own Member States but of the European Union as a larger constitutional compound. The study focuses on the parliaments of France, the United Kingdom and Portugal, which provide a representative sample as regards the system of government, the structure of parliament, the date of accession and so on. The analysis is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the conditions under which national parliaments consent to the transfer of sovereignty to the Union. As the powers that they formerly enjoyed are to some extent taken over by the European Parliament, it was important to inquire whether national parliaments perceive the European Parliament as a partner or rival in effecting the accountability of EU executive institutions. The examples of the Coal and Steel Community Treaty, Maastricht Treaty and Lisbon Treaty show that a sense of partnership tends to prevail. Part II delves into the Europeanisation of national parliaments and the correspondent reform of their competences of scrutiny over draft EU initiatives. While the constitutional contexts within which the selected parliaments operate differ, they have successfully adapted their scrutiny systems to the requirements of the post-Lisbon era. In formal terms, this enables them to participate in the scrutiny of EU policies satisfactorily. Part III adds a qualitative empirical element to the analysis and tests whether and, if so, how national parliaments use their scrutiny powers in practice. We ask what claims they make as a result of their scrutiny. In the in-depth case studies of the Services Directive, the EU-US SWIFT Agreements and the European External Action Service Decision, we examine the attitudes of national parliaments towards different EU policy fields and different types of EU decisions, regarding which the European Parliament possessed different powers of intervention. Applying the method of parliamentary interdependence, we seek to find out whether the actorship of national parliaments is correlative to that of other parliamentary actors existing within the Union. The insight gained is that where an EU dossier is highly politically salient and gives rise to widespread contestation, national parliaments are likely to respond, often with quite specific demands. What is remarkable is that their response is not always addressed at the national government but sometimes also at EU institutions directly. Part IV is interpretational. It argues that national parliaments occupy an important place on the map of EU democracy and that they at times act as EU organs. Their proximity to the electorate makes them an essential link between the citizens and the Union.