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Introduction: The Relevance of Studying Multilevel Governance Read chapter Read first chapter

2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

7. National Parliaments as Multi-Arena-Players: A New Deliberative Role Within the EU Multilevel System?

Author : Katrin Auel

Published in: Configurations, Dynamics and Mechanisms of Multilevel Governance

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The Lisbon Treaty strengthened in the EU multilevel system in several ways, for example through the Early Warning System (EWS) and a stronger focus on inter-parliamentary cooperation. These provisions, Auel argues, provide national parliaments with the opportunity to move on from the role of strategic ‘external veto players’ (Benz in West Eur Polit 27(5): 875–900, 2004) and to adopt a more proactive, constructive and deliberative role as ‘multi-arena players’ that reflects the multilevel character of the EU. Although their impact in terms of parliamentary influence seems to have remained marginal so far, it has been argued that the new provisions can contribute to establishing a public European space by providing a structure of communication not only among parliaments, but also among national demoi. Auel discusses the potential of the new parliamentary role of ‘multi-arena player’ for the development of such a public European space and provides an assessment of its emergence in political practice.

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previous chapter Policy-Making as a Source of Change in Federalism: A Dynamic Approach
next chapter Intermediary Levels of Governance in Multilevel Systems: Exploring the Second Tier of Local Government from the Assessment of Laymen Politicians
Footnotes
1
For a more detailed overview, see Auel and Neuhold (2017).
 
2
The Political Dialogue, introduced with the Barroso initiative in 2006, aims at establishing a dialogue between national parliaments and the European Commission early in the policy-making process and is not, as the EWS, limited to aspects of subsidiarity (see Jančić 2012).
 
3
National parliaments can send a reasoned opinion within eight weeks of receipt of a legislative proposal if they consider the proposal to violate the principle of subsidiarity. These opinions are counted as votes, two per parliament, one per chamber in bicameral systems—and if certain thresholds are reached (one quarter of votes for freedom, security and justice proposals and one third for all other proposals), the proposal must be reviewed. If a threshold of over 50% of votes is reached, the so-called ‘orange card’ not only forces the Commission to review the proposal, but also allows the European Parliament or the Council, acting by defined majorities, to reject the proposal.
 
4
The other new rights have so far not, or not frequently enough, been used, making an assessment difficult.
 
5
According to the annual reports of the European Commission, national parliaments submitted 354 reasoned opinions between 2010 and 2016, see https://​ec.​europa.​eu/​info/​annual-reports-relations-national-parliaments_​en. Parliaments were even more active within the Political Dialogue, having sent more than 4000 opinions to the Commission since the Dialogue’s inception in 2006 (Rozenberg 2017, p. 20).
 
6
These are the yellow cards: on the ‘Proposal for a Council Regulation on the exercise of the right to take collective action …’ (Monti II) (COM/2012/130), on the ‘Proposal for a Council Regulation on the establishment of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office’ (COM/2013/534) and on the ‘Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council … amending Directive 96/71/EC … concerning the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services (COM(2016) 128 final).
 
7
COSAC is the acronym of the inter-parliamentary Conférence des organes spécialisés dans les affaires communautaires (COSAC). All COSAC reports are available online at cosac.eu.
 
8
A more indirect impact of the new EWS is, of course, entirely possible given that the European Commission has established its own subsidiarity checks.
 
9
As the recent annual reports of the European Commission, but also an assessment of the Swedish Riksdag (2018) suggest, parliamentary opinions seem to be at best redundant: Where the final wording of adopted EU legislative acts does indeed reflect parliamentary concerns expressed in opinions, this seems mainly due to the fact that ‘the legislator at the EU level, i.e. the Council and, where appropriate, the European Parliament, had, at least to some extent, similar concerns regarding the Commission’s proposal (Swedish Riksdag 2018, p. 177, translation by the author).
 
10
See Cooper (2015) or Neuhold and Högenauer (2016) on the role of the Danish Folketing, and Pegan and Högenauer (2016) on the role of the Dutch Tweede Kamer as the main entrepreneurs behind the yellow cards on the Monti II and the EPPO directive, respectively.
 
11
Regulation (EU) 2016/794 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and replacing and repealing Council Decisions 2009/371/JHA, 2009/934/JHA, 2009/935/JHA, 2009/936/JHA and 2009/968/JHA.
 
12
Inter-Parliamentary EU Information eXchange.
 
14
The dataset consists of all articles on parliamentary involvement in EU affairs over a period of four years (2010–2013) in seven member states (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the UK) and three newspapers each.
 
16
In Austria, one MEP, invited by the party group responsible by rotation for choosing the topic of the debate, can speak during the so-called quarterly ‘topical EU hours’. Dutch MEPs, in turn, have the opportunity to speak in the Tweede Kamer once a year, on the occasion of the debate on the Staat van de Europese Unie (State of the European Union).
 
17
The news coverage focused mainly on the parliaments of the so-called ‘programme states’ (especially Greece, but also Portugal and Cyprus, less so Ireland or Spain), the German Bundestag, or parliaments where strong opposition to the economic governance reforms threatened their implementation (Finland, France, the Netherlands and Slovakia). Only the British parliament received significant coverage on issues unrelated to the crisis, namely on parliamentary activities related to the planned EU referendum and a possible ‘Brexit’.
 
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Metadata
Title
National Parliaments as Multi-Arena-Players: A New Deliberative Role Within the EU Multilevel System?
Author
Katrin Auel
Copyright Year
2019
Book
Configurations, Dynamics and Mechanisms of Multilevel Governance

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05510-3

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-05511-0

Copyright Year: 2019

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05511-0_7