National Parliaments after Lisbon: Towards Mainstreaming of EU Affairs?
Katjana Gattermann, Anna-Lena Högenauer & Ariella Huff
Abstract: National parliaments in the European Union initially responded to the challenge of scrutinising EU legislation by establishing European Affairs Committees (EACs). This paper argues that further integration, combined with the opportunities and challenges presented by the Lisbon Treaty and financial crisis, create pressure to expand the scrutiny process beyond EACs. In this new phase of Europeanization, parliaments are increasingly ‘mainstreaming’ EU affairs scrutiny, blurring the distinction between national and European policies and involving larger numbers of MPs. We identify four indicators capturing the extent of mainstreaming: the rise of sectoral committees; the adaptation of parliamentary staff to European policy-making; the growing salience of European affairs in plenary debates and increasing inter-parliamentary co-operation beyond European affairs specialists. Although parliaments will adopt mainstreaming at different speeds and to varying extents, we argue that this trend will have significant implications for the roles of national parliaments in the democratic functioning of the EU.
OPAL Online Paper No. 13/2013
ISBN: 978-94-91704-03-1
The paper has been published as the article:
Gattermann K., Högenauer A.L. and Huff A. (2015), research note: studying a new phase of europeanisation of national parliaments, European Political Science, 10 October 2015, doi: 10.1057/eps.2015.56
It is accessible via the following link.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]