A yellow card for the striker: national parliaments and the defeat of EU legislation on the right to strike

Abstract:

In May 2012 national parliaments of the European Union (EU) issued their first yellow card under the Early Warning Mechanism of the Treaty of Lisbon. A sufficient number of them raised objections to a legislative proposal – the Monti II Regulation regarding the right to strike – that the Commission was required to review the proposal, which it subsequently withdrew. This outcome was, demonstrably, not a coincidence but the product of extensive interparliamentary co-ordination, enabled by the initiative of one determined parliament (Denmark's Folketing), the opportunity provided by a well-timed interparliamentary meeting, and the network of national parliament representatives in Brussels. A dynamic political process was set in motion in which a number of parliaments joined the effort to obtain a yellow card by, in effect, ‘voting against' Monti II before the eight-week deadline. The episode shows that, despite claims to the contrary, national parliaments have the capacity and willingness to use their new powers to exercise a collective influence in EU affairs.