Redirecting national parliaments: Setting priorities for involvement in EU affairs

Abstract:

While national parliaments in the European Union have learned to internalize new opportunities for influence given to them by the Lisbon Treaty, European integration has evolved and places ever more serious demands and constraints on domestic legislatures. Following the euro crisis, key decisions about national macro-economic policies are taken in the European Council and the European Semester. These are the issues traditionally at the heart of both democratic governance and citizens’ concerns.

Relating these developments to the key functions national parliaments ought to perform, we develop the normative argument that a redirection of national parliaments’ resources away from less salient matters and particularly the Early Warning Mechanism towards the European Council and European economic governance would be welcome.