Kreilinger, V. (2014) “The relationship between national parliaments and the European Parliament remains contested in the area of economic governance“, LSE EUROPP, 26 September.
The Fiscal Compact, which was signed by 25 of the EU’s member states in 2012, created an inter-parliamentary conference to enable national parliaments to discuss major issues of economic and financial governance. The third meeting of this ‘Inter-parliamentary Conference for Economic and Financial Governance’ will be held on 29 and 30 September. Valentin Kreilinger writes that diverging views on the internal organisation of the conference have so far prevented it from meeting the aims originally envisaged in the Fiscal Compact Treaty.
Inter-parliamentary cooperation and scrutiny could compensate national parliaments for the transfer of power from the national to the European level and for the transfer of power from national parliaments to their governments with respect to fiscal and economic policy. It could also allow the European Parliament to exert influence in an area with little legislative activity and therefore an only marginal role for the European Parliament. In this Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Economic and Financial Governance both parliamentary levels could work together against their declining influence and exert countervailing power. The purpose of inter-parliamentary cooperation should be to ‘discuss’ matters of common interest and to ‘control’ in areas with weak parliamentary scrutiny, but not ‘decide’, because assigning decision-making power would significantly alter the inter-institutional equilibrium.
The need for better cooperation between national parliaments and the European Parliament with respect to the EMU was recognised in the Fiscal Compact treaty (TSCG) which was signed in March 2012:
‘As provided for in Title II of Protocol (No 1) on the role of national Parliaments in the European Union annexed to the European Union Treaties, the European Parliament and the national Parliaments of the Contracting Parties will together determine the organisation and promotion of a conference of representatives of the relevant committees of the European Parliament and representatives of the relevant committees of national Parliaments in order to discuss budgetary policies and other issues covered by this Treaty.’ (Article 13 TSCG)
On the one hand, the European Parliament has traditionally been sceptical about enhancing the role of national parliaments, fearing that this might undermine its position. In an own-initiative report on a genuine EMU, the European Parliament stated in November 2012 that only itself, ‘as parliamentary body at the Union level for a reinforced and democratic EMU governance’, had full democratic legitimacy to exercise control in that area, and described the possibility of creating a mixed parliamentary body as ‘both ineffective and illegitimate’.
On the other hand, national parliaments have consciously adopted their positions towards inter-parliamentary cooperation; their preferences for the precise organisation of this kind of inter-parliamentary cooperation differ and the attitudes of national parliaments towards inter-parliamentary cooperation can be classified into three different roles: (1) inward-looking parliaments that rarely engage beyond the minimum requirements; (2) passively cooperative parliaments that participate in additional activities aimed at discussing inter-parliamentary cooperation; and (3) actively networking parliaments that try to build coalitions in order to bring inter-parliamentary cooperation forward. During the negotiations on the inter-parliamentary conference for Economic and Financial Governance, the Danish, French, German and Lithuanian Parliaments have been important players and adopted strong and visible positions.
Relevant posts:
- Piedrafita, S. & Lannoo, K. (2014) “The new European Parliament: Workable but impaired?“, Politics and Institutions, CEPS Commentaries, 27 June.
- Mudde, C. (2014) “The European Parliament elections show the increasingly fragmented nature of European party systems“, LSE EUROPP, 12 June.
- Booth, S. (2014) “The European Parliament is a failed experiment in pan-European democracy – national parliaments are the key to solving the democratic deficit“, LSE EUROPP, 21 May.