Proces wzmacniania kompetencji Parlamentu Europejskiego a nowa pozycja parlamentów narodowych w systemie politycznym Unii Europejskiej

2021 ◽  
Vol 5(166) ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Czachór ◽  
Janusz Ruszkowski

The authors attempt to examine two parallel and often treated as incomplete processes of strengthening the competences of the European Parliament and at the same time defining a place of national parliaments of Member States in the political system of the EU. The parallelism of these phenomena may seem paradoxical, since it can be assumed that despite competency competition between the EP and the national parliaments, strengthening the competences of the former does not preclude maximising the competences of the latter. The system of unification and harmonisation present in the European Union does not have to weaken national parliaments. The more so that the parliaments of the Member States try to neutralise the autonomy of EU institutions, which “appropriate” their current field of play. The analysis was made based on a research sample consisting of methods for strengthening the EP and methods for maximising the parliaments of the Member States.

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.


Author(s):  
Petr YAKOVLEV

The decision on Britain’s secession from the European Union, taken by the British Parliament and agreed by London and Brussels, divided the Union history into “before” and “after”. Not only will the remaining member states have to “digest” the political, commercial, economic and mental consequences of parting with one of the largest partners. They will also have to create a substantially new algorithm for the functioning of United Europe. On this path, the EU is confronted with many geopolitical and geo-economic challenges, which should be answered by the new leaders of the European Commission, European Council, and European Parliament.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Shaw

What is a ‘European’ Parliament and who should vote for it? Should it be the ‘citizens’ of the European Union alone? If so, should it be all EU citizens, or only those who are resident in the member states? Or should the electorate include potentially all residents in the member states which comprise the EU and who are thus affected by decisions taken in the Parliament? Does anyone have a ‘right’ to vote for the European Parliament? And who should decide who votes for the European Parliament – the member states, or the EU itself? In other words, is there a single European concept of the European Parliamentary demos, or twenty-seven separate, but overlapping, national concepts?


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.


2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1349-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Manow ◽  
Holger Döring

Voters who participate in elections to the European Parliament (EP) apparently use these elections to punish their domestic governing parties. Many students of the EU therefore claim that the party—political composition of the Parliament should systematically differ from that of the EU Council. This study shows that opposed majorities between council and parliament may have other than simply electoral causes. The logic of domestic government formation works against the representation of more extreme and EU-skeptic parties in the Council, whereas voters in EP elections vote more often for these parties. The different locations of Council and Parliament are therefore caused by two effects: a mechanical effect—relevant for the composition of the Council—when national votes are translated into office and an electoral effect in European elections. The article discusses the implications of this finding for our understanding of the political system of the EU and of its democratic legitimacy.


Author(s):  
Katrin Auel

The role and position of national parliaments in European Union (EU) affairs have undergone a long, slow, and sometimes rocky, but overall rather remarkable, development. Long regarded as the victims of the integration process, they have continuously strengthened their institutional prerogatives and have become more actively involved in EU affairs. Since the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments even have a formal and direct role in the European legislative process, namely, as guardians of the EU’s subsidiarity principle via the so-called early warning system. To what extent institutional provisions at the national or the European level provide national parliaments with effective means of influencing EU politics is still a largely open question. On the one hand, national parliaments still differ with regard to their institutional prerogatives and actual engagement in EU politics. On the other hand, the complex decision-making system of the EU, with its multitude of actors involved, makes it difficult to trace outcomes back to the influence of specific actors. Yet it is precisely this opacity of the EU policymaking process that has led to an emphasis on the parliamentary communication function and the way national parliaments can contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the EU by making EU political decisions and processes more accessible and transparent for the citizens. This deliberative aspect is also often emphasized in approaches to the role of national parliaments in the EU that challenge the territorially defined, standard account of parliamentary representation. Taking the multilevel character of the EU as well as the high degree of political and economic interdependence between the member states into account, parliamentary representation is conceptualized as extending beyond the nation-state and as shared across the EU, with a strong emphasis on the links between parliaments through inter-parliamentary cooperation and communication as well as on the representation of other member states’ citizens interests and concerns in parliamentary debates. Empirical research is still scarce, but existing studies provide evidence for the development of an increasingly dense web of formal and informal interactions between parliaments and for changes in the way national parliamentarians represent citizens in EU affairs.


IG ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Nicolai von Ondarza

The Brexit negotiations constituted unchartered political and institutional territory for the European Union (EU). This analysis shows how a new institutional approach enabled the EU-27 to present an unusually united front. The “Barnier method” is characterised by five elements: a strong political mandate from the European Council, a single EU negotiator based in the European Commission in the person of Michel Barnier, very close coordination with the Member States and the European Parliament, and a high degree of transparency. Lessons can also be drawn from this for the next phase of the Brexit negotiations and the EU’s relations with other third countries.


Author(s):  
Kees van Kersbergen ◽  
Bertjan Verbeek

Since the Maastricht Treaty (1993), subsidiarity has guided the political process surrounding the distribution of competences between administrative layers in the European Union (EU). The EU’s subsidiarity regime affects the politics and governance of the EU, because the notion of subsidiarity allows for continuous negotiation over its practical use. The constant battle over subsidiarity implies that the notion changes its meaning over time and alters the power relations between different actors within the EU. Since the Lisbon Treaty (2009), subsidiarity has mainly strengthened the position of member states at the expense of the Commission.


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