The Europeanisation of Parliamentary Democracy by Katrin Auel & Arthur Benz

Author:Katrin Auel & Arthur Benz [Auel, Katrin & Benz, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, American Government, Legislative Branch
ISBN: 9780415371339
Google: wFyqQgAACAAJ
Amazon: B00FDR10B8
Barnesnoble: B00FDR10B8
Goodreads: 20222888
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-01-15T09:04:59+00:00

The Role of National Parliamentary Committees in European Scrutiny: Reflections Based on the Danish Case1

FINN LAURSEN

In recent years we have witnessed a major debate in Europe about democracy within the European Union (EU) and the associated problem of the Union’s legitimacy. As the European integration process has developed to include more countries and more policy areas, more people depend increasingly on what is decided by the EU.

In the early years of the European Communities (EC) the main concept of legitimacy was output oriented. If the EC solved common problems in ways perceived to be good the EC was ipso facto a legitimate organisation. The debate about a democratic deficit in the EC started in the 1980s and took on more urgency in 1992, when the Danes voted ‘No’ to the Maastricht Treaty in June and the French nearly rejected it in September. It was becoming clear that earlier concepts of ‘permissive consensus’ and output legitimacy were increasingly inadequate for the emerging polity.2 Instead, issues of input legitimacy became more important. This included questions concerning the respective roles of the European Parliament (EP) and the national parliaments as well as the accountability of the various other institutions involved in EU policy-making.

The major treaty reforms of the last 15–20 years all saw the European Parliament as the main institutional winner, obtaining the cooperation and assent procedures under the Single European Act (SEA) and the co-decision procedure under the Maastricht Treaty. Since then, there has been a trend towards wider use of co-decision, making the EP a co-legislator with the Council in an increasing number of policy areas. This development continued with the Constitutional Treaty proposed by the European Convention in 2003 and largely confirmed by the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) concluded in June 2004.3

Given the multi-level character of the EU, the question of parliamentary accountability exists at both the national and supranational level. Should the role of national parliaments be increased to make the multi-level polity more democratic? Especially politicians from some of the more integration-sceptical countries have emphasised the importance of national parliamentary scrutiny of Member State policies. Such scrutiny does take place in the Member States, but with great variation in scope and efficiency.

In this paper, the Danish case will be used for a discussion of some of the problems that such national parliamentary scrutiny runs into. This choice of case can be defended because Denmark is the country where the parliament exercises the most stringent control of the government in EU affairs. This control takes place through a committee that emerged back in 1961 when Denmark first tried to join the EC, and it became a permanent committee in 1972 when Denmark finally did join. For many years it was known as the Market Relations Committee, but in 1994, after the Maastricht Treaty had created the European Union, it was renamed the European Affairs Committee (Europaudvalget– EAC).

In the following we will look at how the European Affairs Committee is organised and how it works. What kind of powers does it

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