scholarly journals Relations between European Parliament with the national parliaments of the EU member states

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Joanna Marszałek–Kawa ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrii Martynov

The politics of the European Union are different from other organizations and states due to the unique nature of the EU. The common institutions mix the intergovernmental and supranational aspects of the EU. The EU treaties declare the EU to be based on representative democracy and direct elections take place to the European Parliament. The Parliament, together with the European Council, works for the legislative arm of the EU. The Council is composed of national governments thus representing the intergovernmental nature of the European Union. The central theme of this research is the influence of the European Union Political system the Results of May 2019 European Parliament Election. The EU supranational legislature plays an important role as a producer of legal norms in the process of European integration and parliamentary scrutiny of the activities of the EU executive. The European Parliament, as a representative institution of the European Union, helps to overcome the stereotypical notions of a “Brussels bureaucracy” that limits the sovereignty of EU member states. The European Parliament is a political field of interaction between European optimists and European skeptics. The new composition of the European Parliament presents political forces focused on a different vision of the strategy and tactics of the European integration process. European federalists in the “European People’s Party” and “European Socialists and Democrats” consider the strategic prospect of creating a confederate “United States of Europe”. The Brexit withdrawal from the EU could help the federalists win over European skeptics. Critics of the supranational project of European integration do not have a majority in the new composition of the European Parliament. But they are widely represented in many national parliaments of EU Member States. The conflicting interaction between European liberals and far-right populists is the political backdrop for much debate in the European Parliament. The result of this process is the medium term development vector of the European Union.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jakub Charvát

Modern democratic political systems are hardly conceivable without political representation. This also applies to the European Union, a unique international organisation with a directly elected and fully-fledged assembly representing the EU citizens. Because geography is central to the operation of almost all electoral systems and the European Parliament is the first transnational assembly based on the Member States representation, the paper explores the spatial aspect of the composition of the European Parliament resulting from the 2019 election. The representation in the European Parliament may be degressively proportional, which implies malapportionment of seats across the EU Member States. The paper, thus, seeks to quantify the malapportionment in the 2019 election at both the aggregate level (by the adaption of Loosemore and Hanby´s distortion index) and individual level (advantage ratio and the value of a vote). It concludes malapportionment was just below 14,5% of the total seats in 2019 while the 2019 election did not bring the degressively proportional representation in the European Parliament as required by the Lisbon Treaty.


Author(s):  
Christopher Lord

This chapter examines the legitimacy and democratic control of the European Union's international policies. It first explains why, with whom, and by what standards the EU's international role need to be legitimate before discussing the issue of democratic control involving the European Parliament (EP) and national parliaments. More specifically, it considers the member states' mantra that the legitimacy of EU decisions is ‘founded on the principle of representative democracy’, delivered through the representation of citizens in the EP and national democracies in the European Council, the Councils, and their own national parliaments. It also emphasizes the great variety in the EU's international policy procedures and concludes by assessing how legitimacy might enable or constrain the development of the EU as an international actor.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (33) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
Pilar Mellado Prado

Las grandes diferencias entre las legislaciones de los Estados miembros de la Unión Europea que regulan las elecciones al Parlamento europeo provocan la desigualdad en la representación; lo que se traduce en que el Parlamento Europeo, no obstante lo dispuesto en el Tratado de Lisboa, sigue siendo una institución que no representa realmente al pueblo europeo.The analysis of the electoral legislations of the EU member States shows the existence of serious differences among them. As a consequence the representation is clearly unequal. Thus, notwithstanding the wording of Article 14.2 Lisbon TEU, and contrary to the claim that Article 10.1 Lisbon TEU seems to make according to its wording the European Parliament is still an institution that does not represent the European people.


Author(s):  
Dieter Grimm

This chapter considers the proposal that increasing the clout of the European Parliament will solve the EU’s legitimacy problem. It first examines the argument that giving the Parliament the powers national parliaments typically enjoy will enable the EU to gain democratic legitimacy. It then discusses the importance of making a full account of standards, such as representation, in ascertaining whether increasing the powers of the European Parliament will deliver on its promise. It also examines the asymmetry between negative and positive integration as the root of the liberalizing tendency of the European Court of Justice’s jurisprudence. The chapter contends that the EU must develop a self-interest in strong democracy in the Member States, rather than undermining it by increasingly crippling national powers, and calls for an end to the detachment of the European Commission and the ECJ from the democratic processes in the EU and the Member States.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223
Author(s):  
Julianna Sára Traser ◽  
Márta Benyusz

This article concludes the presentations made at and the main lessons drawn from the international conference held on 21 September 2020, within the framework of the pan-European dialogue on the future of Europe, co-organised by the Ferenc Mádl Institute and the Ministry of Justice. It also presents the EU context and background of the debate, the role of the EU institutions, and the evolution of their position. The event was attended by representatives of the EU, Hungarian politicians, and representatives from academia and civil society. With this event, Hungary officially launched a series of conferences on the future of Europe. The presentations in these conferences reflected the crises facing the Union, including the institutional challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the effectiveness of the EU and its Member States' responses to them. The speakers considered the involvement of and consultation with citizens important to the process. In the context of disputes over competences between the EU and the Member States, some speakers drew attention to the spillover effect, and others called for the strengthening of the supervisory role of constitutional courts and the need for more effective involvement of national parliaments in subsidiarity control, with regard to the sovereignty of the Member States and the primacy of EU law. Critical remarks were made on the limited nature of civil society representation at the EU level. The article reflects on the main events on thinking about the future of Europe over the last four years, including the main initiatives and positions expressed by the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Heads of State and Government, citizens' consultations, and institutional competition in relation to the thematic and organisational issues of the EU-level conference. Whereas the European Commission and European Parliament, which has an ambitious position and has already proposed concrete solutions to organisational and governance issues, were the first to formulate their vision, the position of the Council, representing the Member States, will not be established until June 2020. Thus, no joint declaration on part of the institutions has been adopted thus far and no conference has been hosted, either. In view of all this, the organisation of the international conference by the Ferenc Mádl Institute of Comparative Law and the Ministry of Justice can be considered timely and proactive.


2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 800-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Xydias

This study offers a contextual explanation for discrepancies in women’s rates of election between European national legislatures and the European Parliament (EP). Many European Union (EU) member states elect more women to the EP than to their national lower legislative houses. However, the margin of difference between women’s presence in the EP and these national legislatures varies widely across member states. Using data for the EU-27, the study corroborates previous research in showing that institutional accounts offer limited leverage in explaining these varying gaps. Instead, it argues that the discrepancy between women’s descriptive representation at national and European levels in each case is the result of contextual factors: voters, parties, and upwardly mobile politicians’ valuation of the EP and EP service moderates the translation of the national pool of potential female candidates into EP officeholders.


Author(s):  
Dieter Grimm

This chapter examines the role of national parliaments in the European Union. It first considers the general trend towards de-parliamentarization in the EU before describing the European situation by distinguishing three separate phases, in which the national parliaments have different functions: the transfer of sovereign rights from the Member States to the EU, the exercise of those transferred rights by the EU, and the implementation of European decisions by the Member States. The chapter then explores the question of whether the European Parliament is capable of compensating at the European level for the erosion of legislative authority at the national level. Finally, it discusses the proposal that the European Parliament be vested with the powers typically possessed by national parliaments as a solution to the EU’s legitimacy crisis and argues that full parliamentarization is not the answer.


Author(s):  
Dieter Grimm

Europe is in crisis. With rising unrest among citizens of European Union Member States exemplified by the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU), and the growing popularity of anti-EU political parties, this book presents the argument that Europe has to change its method of further integration or risks failure. The book asserts that currently the EU does not have enough sources of legitimation to uphold itself, surviving solely on the legitimation provided by Member States. One popular remedy is the suggestion of ‘parliamentarization’ of the EU, giving the European Parliament the powers typically possessed by national parliaments as a means of heightening its legitimation. This is criticized by the book as expanding the Parliament’s powers would not change the effects of over-constitutionalization as the Parliament is inferior to the constitution. In order to reduce the EU’s legitimacy deficit, the book makes several recommendations, including the re-politicization of the decision-making processes, which can be achieved by reducing treaties to the capacity necessary for their constitutional function; the reinvigoration of European Parliament elections, by having ‘Europeanized’ parties to increase engagement with European society and give voters the opportunity to more immediately influence European politics; and a new division of powers based on subject matter to restrain European expansionism, reserving particular areas of policy to the responsibility of Member States even if this affects the common market.


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