|
The Reform Treaty signed on 13 December 2007 under the Portuguese Presidency in Lisbon creates essential new
powers for the national parliaments of the Member States of the European Union. Among the most significant
innovations of the Treaty’s Protocol No. 1 on the role of national parliaments in the European Union and Protocol
No.2 on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality are: Direct communication with the
Commission; the eight-week period for the subsidiarity check; the enhanced three-stage ‘early warning mechanism’;
1 the right to initiate proceedings before the European Court of Justice for infringements of the subsidiarity
principle; and the right to veto the European Council’s use of the ‘passerelle’ clause. Moreover, for the first time,
national parliaments have been referred to in the Treaty text, which shows the drafters’ intention to stress the
importance of their role in the new Union.2 National parliaments have also scored a veto right in the field of family law with crossborder implications, and the right to monitor the work of Europol and Eurojust.
Are we then witnessing the birth of a new organ of the European Union? While it would be premature to give a
straightforward answer, it is certain that these novelties bring about a conceptually new relationship between the
national parliaments and other EU institutions, especially those involved in the decision-making process (the Commission, European Parliament and the Council) and judicial review (the European Court of Justice). The aim of this contribution is not to describe all the changes that the Reform Treaty brings for national parliaments, but rather to raise awareness of the implications of the recent constitutional developments in the European Union for its very nature. This will be done by the constitutional analysis of selected pertinent issues.
We shall first delve into the theoretical analysis of the new polycentric model of European constitutionalism and
apply this new concept to the two salient features of the Reform Treaty: (a) the subsidiarity check mechanism and (b)
the extended ECJ’s jurisdiction. Thereafter, we shall make an assessment of the current development in this respect
and see if these features constitute a solid basis for the creation of a new constitutional blueprint for the post-Lisbon European Union.
|
