Suchergebnisse

THIS ARTICLE SUGGESTS THAT THE INGREDIENTS FOR AN IMPROVED INFORMATION SYSTEM IN EUROPE ALREADY EXIST. A WEALTH OF CURRENT INFORMATION CAN BE DERIVED FROM EUROPEAN UNION-RELATED ELECTRONIC DATABASES AND THROUGH DIRECT LINKS BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS. THE ARTICLE ALSO PROPOSES THAT A NEW CURRENT AWARENESS SERVICE FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, DISTRIBUTED VIA THE PARLIAMENTARY NETWORK AND AS HARD COPY, COULD FOCUS INFORMATION FOR MP'S IN A MUCH MORE ACCESSIBLE WAY.

Defence date: 16 December 2014 ; Examining Board: Professor Bruno De Witte, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Loïc Azoulai, European University Institute; Professor Damian Chalmers, London School of Economics; Professor Thomas Christiansen, Maastricht University. ; This PhD thesis studies the role of national parliaments in the policing of the EU subsidiarity principle. The Treaty of Lisbon enshrines the Early Warning System (EWS) in Protocol No. 2, according to which national parliaments may review Commission proposals for compatibility with the subsidiarity principle expressed in Article 5(3) TEU. On the basis of the number of reasoned opinions submitted, which count as votes, national parliaments may trigger either a 'yellow' or an 'orange' card, each of which entails different consequences for the Commission draft act in question. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the functioning of the EWS and to explore why national parliaments participate in this mechanism. To achieve this task, this thesis analyses the reasoned opinions issued under the EWS. Hence, this thesis firstly conducts a case study of the Commission proposal on the establishment of the European Public Prosecutor's Office which triggered a 'yellow card'. This example shows that national parliaments tend to conduct a broad scrutiny of Commission proposals, which includes aspects other than the subsidiarity of the proposal: its legal basis, the competence of the EU to act, its proportionality and its substance. This practice of national parliaments is evaluated according to a textual, structural and functional interpretation of the EU Treaties, and as a result, a narrow subsidiarity test is suggested for the purpose of the EWS. Thereafter, the thesis explores the national procedures of ex ante (EWS) and ex post (action before the ECJ) scrutiny. In addition, national debates are studied in order to analyse the relationship between national legislatives and executives, between parliamentary majorities and opposition, as well as the reflection of regional interests. This detailed study of debates also points to the first reasons for the participation of national parliaments in the EWS: the protection of idiosyncratic national interests and the restriction of EU redistributive policies. Further reasons for national parliaments' participation in the EWS are indicated on the basis of two case studies, dealing with the Monti II regulation (competence), and the Tobacco Products Directive ('delegated legislation'). These suggest that the EWS is used by national parliaments to increase their impact in the EU legislative process. The last case study of this thesis – the 'Women on Boards' proposal – ponders the application of the EWS to 'genuine' fundamental rights proposals, showing that the subsidiarity tests at stake here are focused to a much greater extent on a political willingness to protect universal values, rather than on efficiency. The thesis concludes by discussing whether the EWS enhances the EU's democratic legitimacy and decreases the EU's competence creep, which were the leading ideas behind the introduction of the Protocol No. 2 mechanism. It is pointed out that, although the impact of national parliaments on EU policy-making is uneasy to measure, some of the criticism of national parliaments is taken on board by the EU legislator. Because the 'competence creep' of the EU is rather limited, it also does not demand a great deal of involvement on the part of national parliaments.

Institutional structures and decision-making processes, which have been established in the European Union, fall beyond the scope of national rules for the functioning of parliamentary government. National parliaments of the EU member states have not succeeded in acquiring solid positions in the multilevel constellation within the Union. Yet nowadays they are assigned an important mission in their efforts to overcome, alongside the European Parliament (EP), the growing democratic deficit at both the European and national levels. The article is meant to assess the potential of national parliaments in capitalizing on the Lisbon Treaty provisions and on new forms of their engagement with supranational institutions (the European Council, the European Commission and the EP in particular), aimed at enhancing their legitimizing influence. General paradigm for the analysis is determined by the multilevel governance concept (MLG). It allows for a picture of European decision-making, which is shared by actors placed at different levels of the governance structure. National parliaments are supposed to be provided with multiple access points to the political process in the European Union as well. But the MLG vision doesn't contradict the fact that the key role within the EU belongs to those who occupy the highest executive power positions at the national level. Three directions for the national parliaments to intensify their involvement are put into spotlight: parliamentary control over national executives; control of compliance with the subsidiarity principle in European legislative proposals and supranational decisions; political dialogue with the European Commission and interparliamentary cooperation. The analysis proves that conditions are ripe for more active stance of national parliaments in the EU affairs. The "system of early warning" of the subsidiarity principle violations, provided for in the Lisbon Treaty, seems most promising. But national parliaments themselves will still have to demonstrate more persistence when using new instruments. Acknowledgment. The article has been supported by a grant of the Russian Foundation for Humanities (RFH). Project № 14-07-00050.

National parliaments' contribution to the law-making process at European level should focus on the overall rationality of the draft legislative proposals. The Early Warning Mechanism must not be limited to considerations regarding the breach of the principle of subsidiarity, but also encompass the principle of conferral and the principle of proportionality. The Political Dialogue could be enhanced to acknowledge the legisprudential role assigned to national parliaments, encompassing configurations akin to the green or red card without the need to amend the Treaties. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EU Member States managed to agree on key financial instruments to support the economic recovery of Europe. The decision to manage these instruments within the existing European Semester procedure has put this procedure into the spotlight. Adequate parliamentary involvement in this procedure is crucial. The pandemic can serve as […]
The post Democratizing the European Semester: the involvement of national parliaments appeared first on Post-Crisis Democracy in Europe.

This book investigates recent public debates about the European Union (EU) in national parliaments, which have become the primary arena for public debate about the EU. Responding to claims about a politicization of European governance, the author investigates the link between two dimensions of debate - the discursive justification and party political contestation of decision-making in the EU. Embedded in a comparison between the legislatures of four Member States (Austria, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), the main finding of the book is that generalizable links can be identified between the use of different argumentative frames and patterns of party political polarization. These insights help to clarify the context conditions in which patterns of left/right and government/opposition politics are replaced by more atypical forms of polarization. In a comparative perspective, the author demonstrates that party political factors are a more relevant factor for variation than thematic or country-specific cultural or institutional factors. Case studies include debates on EU Treaty Reform, the Eurozone crisis, and EU enlargement.