Belgian regional parliaments and the European Union: an analysis of parliamentary scrutiny in agricultural and environmental policies

ABSTRACT

Drawing on qualitative case studies of two specific European decision-making processes in the agricultural and environmental sectors, this paper discusses how and why Belgian regional parliaments activated (or not) their control mechanisms to scrutinise their respective regional ministers. The findings show that parliamentary scrutiny of the agricultural and environmental policy fields has undergone a process of institutional and behavioural Europeanisation. Belgian regional parliaments rely mostly on classical parliamentary tools aimed at gathering information and, to a lesser extent, on constraining instruments aimed at influencing their government. Rather than trying to influence the EU negotiations, the MPs try to assess the potential impact of the reforms on their regional policy sectors. The findings also demonstrate that domestic media coverage and political salience of the EU negotiation associated with important implementing powers of regional parliaments have a positive effect on the level of scrutiny conducted by Belgian regional assemblies.     

To have a voice in the matter: A comparative study of the Swedish and Danish European committees

This article deals with the issue of how the national parliaments might be strengthened in order to decrease the democratic deficit within the EU. It examines the parliamentary European committees in the Danish and Swedish Parliaments and concludes that their potential to influence and control their respective governments’ EU policies mainly depends on the Government's parliamentary base and opportunities for legislative influence open to parliamentary oppositions. Moreover, it examines various organisational aspects of the European committees, including distribution of tasks and internal co‐ordination within the Parliament, at what stage in the decision‐making process the European Committee and the Parliament are involved and information management. With some conspicuous exceptions, Denmark and Sweden have chosen the same organisational arrangements for dealing with EU affairs both in the Parliament as a whole and, specifically, in the European committees. The principal conclusion is that the European committees in Sweden and Denmark are effective means for giving the national parliaments a voice in EU matters, but the article also addresses some reforms to strengthen their positions.     

National Parliaments and EU Fiscal Integration

This article analyses the impact of the euro crisis on national parliaments and examines their response to the deepening of EU fiscal integration and the correspondent limitation of their budgetary autonomy. It argues that the sovereign debt crisis has provoked the emergence of new channels of parliamentary involvement in EU economic governance. National parliaments have acquired various rights of approval in the European Semester, strengthened the accountability of national governments, reinforced their scrutiny over budgeting, improved their access to information, and created domestic and supranational avenues for deliberation and political contestation of European integration. In these respects, they have undergone further Europeanisation. While these reforms do not outweigh the centralisation of EU powers, they represent an embryonic step in the parliamentary adaptation to the nascent EU fiscal regime. Yet they are unlikely substantially to influence EMU policy‐making processes, because of the democratic disconnect inherent in the EU's multilevel constitution.     

Democratic legitimacy in the European Union: Fulfilling the institutional logic

The European Union's delicate institutional balance between intergovern‐mentalism and supranationalism has been the source of both the EU's successes and its problems. This balance is under scrutiny as representatives of Member States and EU institutions pursue their particular visions of democratic legitimacy in the course of the 1996–97 Intergovernmental Conference. This essay examines three competing conceptualisations of democratic legitimacy: the Gaullist view, which associates legitimacy narrowly with national sovereignty; a national culture perspective that posits a unique correspondence of national character and national parliaments; and a parliamentary view that associates legitimacy with the role played by parliaments in scrutinising the behaviour of executives, whether at national or European level. Only the last of these perspectives acknowledges that democratic legitimacy is a continuous variable rather than an all‐or‐nothing concept, and that the EU may therefore accumulate legitimacy by improving both the process and substance of policy making within the logic of existing institutional structures.     

National Parliamentary Control of EU Policy: The Challenge of Supranational Institutional Development

The history of the EU is characterised by rapid and complex institutional development. This leaves European Affairs Committees (EACs) in national parliaments with a moving target problem in their endeavours to control the government's EU policies. This paper investigates how EACs react to this challenge. Building on the rational delegation literature, it is argued that EACs are likely to adapt control instruments in tandem with institutional changes at the supranational level. Using McCubbins and Schwartz (1984, American Journal of Political Science, 28, 165–179), it is further argued that EACs are likely to want to impose both police patrol and fire alarm control on the government. These arguments are investigated in the case of Denmark during the 50-year period since the first Danish application for EU membership in 1961, and considerable support is found for the authors' hypotheses.     

Regional parliaments in the EU multilevel parliamentary system

ABSTRACT

European integration has created a multilevel political system that is dominated by executive actors. Despite the increasing competences of the European Parliament, a growing EU-awareness of national assemblies and an emerging attention of regional parliaments for EU affairs, the EU polity still lacks a sound parliamentary representation. As the EU presents itself as a representative democracy, the current set-up raises questions from the perspective of democratic legitimacy. The establishment of multilevel parliamentarianism may be part of the remedy. This introduction focuses on the position that regional parliaments take in such a European multilevel parliamentary system. The authors address three relevant questions: what roles do regional parliaments take up in terms of legislation, scrutiny and networking? To what extent are they empowered by the Lisbon Treaty? And what explains the variation in their activities? The authors develop hypotheses that are, to varying degree, addressed by the contributions in this special issue.     

Parliamentary Questioning in 17 European Parliaments: Some Steps towards Comparison

All democratic parliaments have some procedures to allow representatives to put questions to ministers. However, there are no two parliaments with exactly the same procedures. Cross-national comparisons are hindered by the lack of agreed-upon scientific criteria to group similar procedures, which are too often classified on the basis of their names rather than on their substantive characteristics. To overcome this problem, this article devises a typology of parliamentary questions based on relevant procedural features in 17 European countries. A ranking of parliaments according to the criteria of the effectiveness of procedures is developed and a discussion of the relationship of this ranking to the coalitional characteristics of the parliaments is provided. Finally, the article develops some tentative arguments to explain what influences the development of more or less effective questioning procedures, testing the hypothesis that countries dominated by coalition governments tend to have more effective procedures. In contrast with the authors' expectations, with regard to the countries included in the present analysis, the frequent presence of coalition government is associated with weaker procedures.     

National parliaments and the European Union: part of the problem or part of the solution to the democratic deficit in the European constitutional settlement?

European integration is as much an opportunity as a threat to national parliaments. The view that national parliaments have been the main losers in the process is not substantiated by empirical evidence. National parliaments have adapted their structures and procedures to keep pace with the increasing scope of integration. This process has included strengthening the constitutional powers of parliaments in some of the member states. The recognition in the Nice and Laeken declarations that national parliaments have an important role in enhancing the democratic legitimacy of the Union and the key provisions of the draft protocols on the role of national parliaments and subsidiarity adopted by the Convention on the Future of Europe will ensure that national parliaments have the opportunity and the means, if they so choose, to be closely involved in Union affairs. Constitutional change at the Union level is likely to trigger normative and procedural change in the member states.     

Chronicling National Assembly committees as markers of institutional change

This article examines changes to the National Assembly for Wales committees and how they act as markers that help explain the dynamics of a significant and contemporaneous constitutional journey. It uses as its backdrop recent constitutional and political change in the UK, particularly that initiated by devolution. Uniquely, we draw upon management theory as well as political science to explain why changes in the focus, identity and profile of Assembly committees represent significant markers or reflectors of constitutional shifts. We suggest that examining key components within the internal architecture of parliaments at different stages of development offers an additional and complementary level of institutional analysis. Our review of the Assembly committees reveals that they have reflected the pace and shape of change in Welsh devolution, and that shifts in their profile and operation offer another insight into devolution, whilst also reflecting wider institutional and political change.     

Conclusion: regional parliaments – a distinct role in the EU?

ABSTRACT

Regional parliaments can shape EU policy-making via a range of domestic and European channels. In the context of a renewed interest in the subnational level, this article aims to address three core questions: have regional parliaments really been empowered by the early warning system provisions? Which factors explain differences in strength and mobilisation? Finally, what kind of a role do regional parliaments play in EU policy-making today, now that they have had several years to react to the trend towards multilevel parliamentarism? The authors argue that regional parliaments do indeed have the potential to contribute a distinct perspective to EU policy-making, even if their current level of activity is still low. Their distinctive territorial focus sets them apart from national parliaments. Their level of activity still varies greatly between parliaments depending on a number of factors.     

Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation in EU Affairs and the Austrian Parliament: Empowering the Opposition?

This article takes up recent arguments to strengthen national parliamentary powers in EU decision-making through inter-parliamentary cooperation. By widening the analytical focus from parliaments to the cooperation amongst the parties within parliaments, it seeks to advance the debate in two respects. First, the article aims at providing a more accurate picture about the cooperation going on today. Second, it discusses why the amount of, and the benefits gained from inter-parliamentary cooperation may vary between parties and therefore cooperation may not only affect the power relations between national parliaments and non-parliamentarian actors, but also those within parliaments. Based on the results of a study of the Austrian parliament it is argued that inter-parliamentary cooperation (a) is more important for opposition parties than for governing parties but that (b) parties can make use of its full potential only when their ideology allows them to integrate into a European party network.     

The Unequal Distribution of Speaking Time in Parliamentary‐Party Groups

Parliamentary debates provide an arena where Members of Parliament (MPs) present, challenge, or defend public policies. However, the “plenary bottleneck” allows the party leadership to decide who participates in a debate. We argue that in this decision the timing of a debate matters: in proximity of elections, the leadership should be concerned with maintaining its brand name and therefore restrict floor access, in particular if the debate is salient for the respective party. We evaluate our hypotheses in a cross‐country study drawing on a novel data set covering all speeches given during one or two legislative terms in six European parliaments. We find that the electoral cycle matters for the distribution of speaking time: Party leaders do restrict parliamentary speechmaking to a smaller number of MPs at the end of the term. This has important implications for our understanding of parliaments as an electoral arena and for our understanding of intraparty politics.     

Challenging Executive Dominance in European Democracy

Executive dominance in the contemporary EU is part of a wider migration of executive power towards types of decision making that eschew electoral accountability and popular democratic control. This democratic gap is fed by far‐going secrecy arrangements and practices exercised in a concerted fashion by the various executive actors at different levels of governance and resulting in the blacking out of crucial information and documents – even for parliaments. Beyond a deconstruction exercise on the nature and location of EU executive power and secretive working practices, this article focuses on the challenges facing parliaments in particular. It seeks to reconstruct a more pro‐active and networked role of parliaments – both national and European – as countervailing power. In this vision parliaments must assert themselves in a manner that is true to their role in the political system and that is not dictated by government at any level.     

National Parliaments in the European Union: Are There Any Benefits to Integration?

Abstract: Scholars and observers alike agree that the European Union has weakened national parliaments. This article posits that such a view, while generally accurate, ignores ways in which the EU has helped national parliaments in their function as regulators of society. It identifies two key mechanisms: precedent setting and policy transfer. First, the EU has produced laws on topics considered beyond the traditional remit of national parliaments. The EU's intervention has justified the production of unprecedented domestic laws that go well beyond the incorporation of EU principles. This has expanded the legislative reach of national parliaments. The article considers the experiences of Italy and The Netherlands in the area of antitrust. Second, the EU has fostered an environment conducive to cross‐national lesson drawing. The resulting knowledge has helped the design of more effective domestic legislative frameworks. This has confirmed the viability of national parliaments as regulatory institutions. The article examines the Open Method of Co‐ordination and its application to the areas of employment and social inclusion. It concludes with a discussion of parliaments in future Member States and in Mercosur.     

Spokes in the wheel. European affairs and the parliamentary administration of German Landtage

ABSTRACT

Over the last decades, regional parliaments were considered to play a minor role in European affairs. Not only was the salience of the EU low at the regional level, but politicians elected into these bodies also often lacked vested interests and capacities to become more involved in dealing with complex multi-level questions. After the constitutional strengthening of regional parliaments in EU decision-making, this paper considers one under-researched aspect behind the growing appetite of regional parliaments to become more involved in the scrutiny of EU affairs: the role of unelected parliamentary officials. Based on qualitative interviews in 12 German regional parliaments, the authors highlight how regional parliaments exert control over their governments and what role horizontal administrative networks among parliamentary staff play in the engagement of regional parliaments in EU affairs.     

MPs' Role Orientations in Newly Emerged Democratic Legislatures

Understanding the behaviour of the elected representatives at the beginning of the transition period in former Communist countries provides an insight into some of the first freely elected parliaments after decades of authoritarianism. The role perception grasps the essence of how MPs position themselves in their decision-making process in a fuzzy institutional setting. By relying on the sole established institutions for that period (that is, political parties), this article tests to what extent the party type and size explain role orientations of the MPs in terms of delegates (from the party), trustees, and politicos. Using a dataset that includes over 600 MPs from four parliaments, this cross-national analysis reveals that MPs belonging to newly emerged and rather small parties are more likely to be party delegates compared with their colleagues.     

The conference of European affairs committees: A collective voice for national parliaments in the European union

The role of national parliaments in the European Union has been the subject of intense debate in the last decade. The Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties contained significant texts aimed at enhancing the role of national parliaments. Several major political figures in Europe have recently discussed the case for making the collective voice of national parliaments better heard and this issue is firmly on the ‘post‐Nice’ agenda.’ In parallel, an important debate has been running between the parliaments themselves about a collective role for national parliaments. Since 1989, a little‐known body has provided a forum for these debates. This article aims to set out the history of that body, and to highlight some of the issues surrounding an enhanced role for national parliaments.     

Keeping national parliaments informed: The problem of European legislation

Since Maastricht there has been a growing realisation in the institutions of the European Union, that the unfettered flow of information is vital to the health of the whole European project. Some moves have been made towards more transparent decision‐making, but progress has been slow and is limited by a culture which values confidentiality, particularly in intergovernmental negotiations. The free flow of information is especially important to national parliaments if they are to exercise any influence in the EU. The House of Commons Select Committee on European Legislation has recently pronounced the scrutiny system to be ‘in deep crisis’ because of chaotic decision‐making and a disregard for the rights of national parliaments. Many Westminster MPs feel frustrated by the difficulty of keeping track of EU legislation. The paper suggests that the ingredients of an improved information system already exist. A wealth of current information can be derived from EU‐related electronic databases and through direct links between the European Parliament and national parliaments. It proposes that a new current awareness service for the House of Commons, distributed via the parliamentary network and as hard copy, could focus information for MPs in a much more accessible way.     

An information network of officials? Dissecting the role and nature of the network of parliamentary representatives in the European Parliament

Enhancing the role of national parliaments in the European Union’s decision-making process has for some time been a popular way in which policy-makers have sought to address legitimacy problems in the European Union, the Early Warning Mechanism being only one example. In response to these developments, an increasing number of scholars have addressed the question of how parliaments make use of these powers in practice. An important dimension of the process – the role of parliamentary officials in parliamentary scrutiny and control – has so far been neglected in the literature. Against this background, this article examines the role of the representatives of national parliaments in the European Parliament with the aim of understanding the role and the nature of this ‘bureaucratic network’. While falling short of an epistemic community, these officials play an important role in enabling parliamentary scrutiny through the dissemination of information.     

National Parliaments and European Integration: What We Know and Agenda for Future Research

The role of national legislatures in European integration first received serious attention in the mid-1990s in connection with debates on the EU's democratic deficit. Since then, both academics and politicians have entered a lively debate on how best to involve national parliaments in EU affairs. The purpose of this article is to examine critically the state of research on the role of national parliaments in European integration and to use that existing knowledge to suggest avenues for further research. The main argument is that through focusing almost exclusively on scrutiny of European affairs, the literature has failed to acknowledge the multiple constraints that impact on legislatures. There is a demand for more theory-driven analyses of actual behaviour that extend beyond describing formal procedures and organisational choices. Future research should also pay more attention to the strategies of political parties and to the incentives of individual MPs to become involved in European affairs.