National Parliaments and Democratic Control in the EU

There have frequently been calls for national parliaments to take on a greater role in EU matters. For some commentators, the closer involvement of national parliaments (NPs) in the EU is necessary because they are the clearest repositories of popular legitimacy. In an extreme statement of this view, the then Prime Minister John Major argued in 1994: 'The European Parliament sees itself as the future democratic focus of the Union. But this is a flawed ambition, because the European Union is an association of States, deriving its basic democratic legitimacy through national parliaments.'

This brief note will suggest that the closer involvement of NPs in EU policy-making can make only a limited contribution
to improving democratic accountability in the EU. This note will also consider how national parliaments could be associated with treaty change and examine the general link between national parliaments and democratic legitimacy.