National parliaments after the Lisbon Treaty and the Euro crisis : resilience or resignation?

353 Pages·2017·2.497 MB·English

by  Davor Jančić

i
OXFORD STUDIES IN EUROPEAN LAW
Series Editors
PAUL CRAIG
Professor of English Law at St John’s College, Oxford
GRÁINNE DE BÚRCA
Professor of Law at New York University School of Law
National Parliaments After the Lisbon Treaty and the Euro Crisis
ii
OXFORD STUDIES IN EUROPEAN LAW
Series Editors: Paul Craig, Professor of English Law at St John’s College, Oxford and
Gráinne de Búrca, Professor of Law at New York University School of Law
The aim of this series is to publish important and original research on EU law. The
focus is on scholarly monographs, with a particular emphasis on those which are
interdisciplinary in nature. Edited collections of essays will also be included where they
are appropriate. The series is wide in scope and aims to cover studies of particular areas of
substantive and of institutional law, historical works, theoretical studies, and analyses of
current debates, as well as questions of perennial interest such as the relationship between
national and EU law and the novel forms of governance emerging in and beyond Europe.
The fact that many of the works are interdisciplinary will make the series of interest to all
those concerned with the governance and operation of the EU.
Other titles in this series
Environmental Integration in Competition and Free-M ovement Laws
Julian Nowag
EU Agencies
Legal and Political Limits to the Transformation of the EU Administration
Merijn Chamon
Coherence in EU Competition Law
Wolf Sauter
Foreign Policy Objectives in European Constitutional Law
Joris Larik
Economic Governance in Europe
Comparative Paradoxes and Constitutional Challenges
Federico Fabbrini
Private Regulation and the Internal Market
Sports, Legal Services, and Standard Setting in EU Economic Law
Mislav Mataija
The EU Deep Trade Agenda
Law and Policy
Billy A. Melo Araujo
The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law
Cathryn Costello
An Ever More Powerful Court?
The Political Constraints of Legal Integration in the European Union
Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen
The Concept of State Aid under EU Law
From internal market to competition and beyond
Juan Jorge Piernas López
Justice in the EU
The Emergence of Transnational Solidarity
Floris de Witte
The Euro Area Crisis in Constitutional Perspective
Alicia Hinarejos
The European Fundamental Freedoms
A Contextual Approach
Pedro Caro de Sousa
iii
National
Parliaments After
the Lisbon Treaty
and the Euro Crisis
Resilience or Resignation?
Edited by
DAVOR JANČIĆ
Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary University of London
1
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v
Preface
At a time when the position, legitimacy and even the continued existence of the
European Union has been seriously questioned, and the EU confronts a range of
daunting challenges, a book which examines the role of national parliaments is to be
welcomed. After all, one of the reasons often suggested for the lack of popular sup-
port for the EU is the remoteness of the Brussels institutions from national political
institutions and from daily life in the member states. More substantial involvement by
national parliaments in the workings of the EU has often been proposed as one possi-
ble avenue for addressing the EU’s democratic legitimacy deficit, enhancing its domes-
tic connectedness and improving the representative nature of its decision-making.
This book adds to the burgeoning literature on national parliaments by focusing on
the changed role of national parliaments within the EU after the coming into force of
the Lisbon Treaty. The book gives particular attention to the question of how national
parliaments have responded to the increased centralization and intergovernmentalism
of the EU’s functioning in the wake of the Euro crisis.
The editor and contributors have taken the view that ex-ante involvement by
national parliaments in EU law and policy making is more significant than ex-post
involvement, and the various chapters in the book emphasize the importance of the
representative function of national parliaments, as well as their capacity to express
aspects of national identity.
The different sections of the book contain a range of detailed and interesting con-
tributions dealing with topics including the contribution of national parliamentary
activity to the democratic legitimacy of the EU, the various ways in which the financial
crisis and the EU’s response to it have affected national parliaments, the subsidiarity
mechanism and the range of ways in which national parliaments interact and cooper-
ate with one another across the EU. The contributors include academics from various
disciplinary backgrounds and policy-makers with insights into different aspects of the
functioning of national parliaments.
This is a timely and welcome book which should be of interest to all students and
scholars of the law and politics of the European Union.
Gráinne de Búrca
Paul Craig
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Acknowledgements
The role of national parliaments in the European Union is one of the most topical
institutional issues of European integration and democracy. This is because, despite
recurring amendments of the EU founding treaties and incremental Europeanization
of national parliaments in terms of adapting to the exigencies of EU policy-m aking,
their role remains in the constitutional shadow of executive actors and courts. Taking
them out of this shadow by incorporating them into the EU’s institutional spectrum
in a way that creates a stronger linkage between the citizens and EU decision-m aking
processes remains a puzzle and an object of disagreement in both academia and politi-
cal practice.
This raises important theoretical questions related to the concepts of constitu-
tionalism and democratic legitimacy. The outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis in the
Eurozone has engendered a new context in which parliaments have had to calibrate
their functions afresh. A rapidly developing network of relations between national par-
liaments themselves, as well as between them and the European Parliament and the
European Commission has been a constantly evolving dynamic of EU development.
This edited volume addresses these three issues in greater depth in a manner that will
appeal to both scholars and policy- makers.
The book is based on the LSE and British Academy conference that the editor organ-
ized together with Prof. Damian Chalmers on 10 April 2015 at the LSE Department
of Law. The event took stock of the evolution of the functions of national parliaments
in the contemporary EU. The conference was funded by the British Academy’s Newton
International Fellowship scheme in cooperation with the LSE and marked the comple-
tion of the editor’s two- year post- doctoral tenure at the LSE.
I am therefore indebted to the British Academy, the LSE Law Department, and
Prof. Chalmers personally, for their generous financial, academic, and logistical sup-
port in organizing this conference, without which this book would not have been pos-
sible. I would also like to thank the speakers at the conference, who have contributed
chapters to this book, and to all the participants. Their diverse disciplinary background
and inquisitive minds have enriched the debate and greatly helped to develop ideas for
the contents of the book. Despite being an EU law volume, legal scholars have joined
forces with political scientists to provide interdisciplinary insights into a topic that is
inevitably of appeal to both disciplines.
I am also very grateful to the TMC Asser Instituut from The Hague for their insti-
tutional support and for creating a congenial atmosphere in which I was able to work
on this book.
Perhaps most of all, I am thankful to all the contributors for their cooperation,
effort, and commitment and for putting up with my numerous comments and requests
in the process of producing this volume. I hope our collaboration will yield new knowl-
edge, provoke further research projects, and solidify our contribution to analyzing and
strengthening EU democracy in this turbulent period of European integration.
The manuscript was sent to production on 28 August 2016.
London, 12 September 2016
Dr Davor Jančić
Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary University of London
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Contents
List of Abbreviations  xi
List of Contributors  xv
1. The Legacy of an Evolving Polity: Democracy, National Identity,
and the Good Functioning of the EU 1
Davor Jančić
PART I EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONALISM
AND DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY
2. EU Constitutionalism and National Parliaments: Insiders
or Outsiders? 25
Leonard Besselink
3. National Parliaments and Mediated Legitimacy in the EU: Theory
and History 37
Peter L Lindseth
4. Constitutional Review and the Powers of National Parliaments
in EU Affairs: Erosion or Protection? 59
Cristina Fasone and Nicola Lupo
5. National Parliaments and the European Union—A View From
Westminster 77
Julie Smith
6. Mind the Gap! The Implications of Comitology and the Open
Method of Coordination for National Parliaments 97
Gavin Barrett
PART II NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS AND THE EURO CRISIS
7. Financial Crisis, National Parliaments, and the Reform of the
Economic and Monetary Union 115
Ingolf Pernice
8. Accountability of the European Central Bank in a Deepening
Economic and Monetary Union 141
Davor Jančić