National Parliaments and the European Union - publié le 18/03/2010

Résumé du document

The adoption of the Lisbon Treaty on December 1, 2009 puts into perspective new dimensions of the role of national parliaments into the decisional core of the European Union. Indeed, this Treaty offers to the national parliaments more power to intervene into European affairs but it also strengthens the inequalities between the member States. Therefore, it is interesting to see how since 1979 the national parliaments have lost numerous of these prerogatives but also how things have changed since the entry in force of the Treaty of Lisbon with a movement of rejection of Europe by the population of the member states. To that extent, we will see the nature of the relationship between the EU and the national parliaments within the European institutional framework and to what extent we could say that the national parliaments have gained more powers within the EU. But at the same time, we will also analyze the limits of this extension.

Extraits

[...] In addition, these exchanges were underlined in a declaration on the role of national parliaments in the European Union. In this declaration which was appended to the Maastricht Treaty[4], the national governments were called to transmit to their national parliaments all the Commission propositions in good time for a possible examination. The declaration also recommended that exchanges between the European Parliament and the national parliaments have to be increased to permit a better “involvement in the Community process”[5]. What is in a way paradoxical is that at the same time the Treaty recognizes in its article 3B the principle of subsidiarity that is to say that the decisions taken by the European Union have to be closer to the citizens, that is to say that the good scale has to be chosen too. [...]

[...] Richard, The European Parliament, the national parliaments and European integration, Oxford University Press - KRANZ Jerzy and others, The future of the European Union, in Polish Quaterly of International Affairs, vol.15, winter 2006 - LASOK KPE, Law & institutions of the European Union, Seventh Edition, Butterworths - MAURER Andreas, The European Parliament, the national parliaments and the EU conventions, in Politique européenne, winter 2003 - O'BRENNAN John, National parliaments within the enlarged European Union : from victims of integration to competitive actors?, Routledge, NY Reports - Report of the l'Assemblée de l'Union de l'Europe occidentale” of June, 4th of 2002, 48th session - Official journal of the European Union notably the Protocol on the role of national parliaments in the European Union Websites - www.europa.eu - www.cosac.eu - www.senat.fr - http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/president/index_fr.htm The European Centre of Parliamentary Research and Documentation was created in 1977 and it aimed at facilitating the contact between the EP and the other institutions including the national parliaments. MAURER Andreas, The European Parliament, the national parliaments and the EU conventions, in Politique européenne, winter 2003 [p. [...]

[...] In fact, all these propositions were not included into the Treaty of Lisbon but some of them did. Thus, the relationship between national parliaments and the institutions of the European Union are closer than it was before. The institutional history of the European Union is complex and ambiguous. Indeed, after the edification of the ECSC, the national parliaments used to play a major role notably designating the deputies of a first “Assembly”. Nevertheless, their prerogatives decreased in benefit of other institutions when the European Union was completely built with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992. [...]

[...] We saw that an asymmetry between the national parliaments and the other institutions of the European Union (especially the European Parliament) widened concretely in 1979 and the direct election of the MPs but also more deeply with the Single European Act in 1986 and the Treaty of Maastricht ad Amsterdam. We will see in a second part that after the rejection of the European Constitution in 2005 a “prise de conscience” occurred within the political corpses and that the necessity of including more efficiently the national parliaments appeared as a central question. This central question was concluded in the Treaty of Lisbon. [...]

[...] About the yellow card, Julia Harrison, managing partner at Blueprint Partners said that yellow card is an interesting wild card [ ] but it would take a very controversial initiative to mobilize so many national legislatures against And it is true that we could ask ourselves if national parliaments can undergo to think about their national interests for the European collectivity. As we can see the debates within the COSAC all reserves have to be made. Finally, the fact that there is still no European public space is a major problem nowadays. Is it possible to offer to national parliaments more powers if at the same time there is no way for the population to discuss effectively about the European matters? Indeed, the same of democracy would be noticed. [...]