Fighting back! National Parliaments in EU Affairs
Résumé
First lines: National parliaments, it turns out, are not the poor losers of EU integration – at least not anymore. A recent comparative study shows that they are in general rather active in EU affairs. This is all the more the case, where they are in a strong institutional position in EU affairs. In addition, their activities vary depending on the parliamentary function they emphasise most. Over the course of EU integration, national parliaments have undergone a profound process of formal Europeanisation and are now generally in a much better position to become involved in EU affairs. This adaptation has also followed roughly similar institutional patterns. National parliaments have all established specialised committees – the European Affairs Committees (EACs) – and they have obtained extended rights to be informed about and to give their views on European legislative proposals. Yet the question to what extent parliaments actually make use of their better formal position still remained open, especially given that MPs are well known for not regularly using all the weapons in their armoury. We therefore analysed the parliamentary EU activities across all 27 national parliaments in the EU between 2010 and 2012.