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Gabriele Abels /Annegret Eppler (Eds.)
Subnational Parliaments in the EU Multi-Level Parliamentary System12
Taking Stock of the Post-Lisbon Era
Foster Europe, Foundation for strong European Regions is an independent, non partisan, private, and charitable Austrian foundation to further regional decentralization, federalism and rural development in Europe. While working in a pan-European framework, Foster Europe has its main emphasis in the area of Central and Eastern Europe.
Founded in 2009 in Eisenstadt, Austria, by a group of dedicated people Foster Europe’s purpose is to enhance knowledge, debate and research on regionalism, federalism and rural development, to broach new topics of European relevance and to forge international and interdisciplinary exchange among scholars, intellectuals, practitioners, and institutions.
Foster Europe offers its International Studies Series, continued in irregular intervals, as a token of its aim to launch a new culture of dialogue and discussion in Europe on key questions of importance for the European regions and rural areas.
Foster Europe, Foundation for strong European Regions was inaugurated in 2009 to ‘further regional decentralisation, rural development and federalism in Europe [and] to enhance knowledge, debate and research on regionalism, [and] federalism [in Europe]’.
This is why Foster Europe was delighted when the idea arose to hold a conference on Subnational Parliaments in the EU Multi-level Parliamentary System: Taking Stock of the Post-Lisbon Era in the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt.
Gabriele Abels and Annegret Eppler developed an impressing programme reaching out to encompass the issue in question in the widest possible way. While the academic steering was in the hands of Ms. Abels and Ms. Eppler, the conference in Eisenstadt was embedded in a network of cooperation with partners from Spain, Italy, Austria and Germany that proved to be highly efficient and capable to push European research on the topic ahead.
Foster Europe was pleased to host the conference in the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt and we are pleased to see the impressive conference volume comprising European excellence in scholarship published as volume 3 of the Foster Europe International Studies Series.
This volume is contributing to close a gap in the discourse on European integration and its actors that has for too long underestimated the role and the contribution of parliaments on subnational level in the EU processes. An element of increasing importance in the multi-level governance structure of the European Union will be added to the discourses in federal and integration and parliamentarism studies in Europe.
While parliaments and governments on the national level as well as governments on the subnational level are well researched, this conference volume may spearhead the discourse on subnational parliaments in their role as EU actor. The thorough theoretical discussion of the topic as well as a self-critical research analysis will be extremely valuable for research and teaching federal and regional studies.
All countries analysed in this volume are representative democracies embedded in the multi-level system of the European Union. An intense internal debate on developing the national democratic system within the EU-framework is common to most of the countries case-studied here. Therefore the question if subnational parliaments qualify to improve the democratic legitimacy of the EU multi-level system is a key question to further develop a democratic integrative vison in the European Union.
I would like to thank Gabriele Abels and Annegret Eppler for conceptualisation of the project, and making the conference in Eisenstadt possible. The editors guided the publication to a fruitful result. This was only possible by investing enormous personal resources, a continuous dedication to the topic and providing support from the Jean-Monet-Chair funds available to Gabriele Abels.
Scholarly debate and research on European topics can be fruitful only if pursed in a pan-European framework of cooperation. Therefore I have to thank the partners mentioned that contributed to the conference, the volume and who supported the entire process with endurance and confidence. I owe thanks to the Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy, the Fundación Manuel Giménez Abad de Estudios Parlamentarios y del Estado Autonómico, Zaragoza, Spain, the Institut für Föderalismus in Innsbruck, Austria, and the European Centre for Research on Federalism (ECRF) from Tübingen, Germany.
As always this volume has benefited from the competent patient and restless care given by Petra Möderle and the Studienverlag in Innsbruck. The entire team of contributors and editors is very thankful for this.
Foster Europe regards its collaboration in as well as its contribution to this joint European research and publication project as a token and pledge for its sustained effort to further and develop federalism in Europe.
Eisenstadt, April 2015
Stefan August Lütgenau
Director, Foster Europe
From 6 to 9 November 2012 the editors of this volume organized a four-day workshop in the beautiful Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt, Austria. The objective of this international workshop was to analyze and assess the role subnational parliaments play in the EU multi-level parliamentary system. Thereby, this workshop aimed to continue previous work by the editors on the development of multi-level parliamentarism and to round this work off by focusing on the widely neglected regional dimension. The workshop was a vivid intellectual exchange between outstanding experts and also practitioners from the fields of federalism, parliamentarism and Europeanization studies. The majority of contributions to this very fruitful workshop are presented in this volume. The paper by Tapio Raunio, which he presented at the University of Tübingen in February 2013, was added to this collection. We are deeply grateful to all workshop presenters and authors for their contributions – and for their patience with this book project, which took (as always) longer than expected.
Furthermore, we are most grateful to Foster Europe, Foundation for Strong European Regions and especially to its director Mag. Stefan August Lütgenau for the munificent support of the Foundation. He and his foundation provided us with a very inspiring environment, with the famous Austrian hospitality that certainly contributed to the great success of the workshop and to a very warm and enjoyable atmosphere, and with generous support for this book project.
We also want to extend our deep gratitude to the co-organizers of this workshop, all of them outstanding organizations and experts in the field of federalism and/or parliaments, i.e., the Institute for Research on Federalism Innsbruck, Austria; the Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism at the European Academy of Bolzen/Bolzano, Italy; the Fundación Manuel Giménez Abad de Estudios Parlamentarios y del Estado Autonómico, Zaragoza, Spain; and the European Centre for Research on Federalism (ECRF) from Tübingen, Germany.
We also wish to thank the European Commission for its support. The workshop funding was made possible by the Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme as part of my Jean Monnet Chair work programme (Grant No. 2011–3041).
Finally, a big note of thanks goes to my ‘backup team’ of research assistants, especially Simone Mittl and Frieder Oesterle as well as Larissa Rohr for their copy-editing support, as well as to Alexander Kobusch for his technical support.
Tübingen, March 2015
Gabriele Abels
The theoretical site of European integration research often follows upon the empirical puzzles created by the European integration. List’s (1999) statement about the theories of European integration also applies for this publication: Essential for the first interaction with the topic ‘subnational parliaments in the EU system’ were questions raised by several German state parliaments (Landtage) to the editors of this volume. Specifically, the question which political and legal conditions after the commencement of the Lisbon Treaty and the Lisbon verdict of the German Constitutional Court, that strengthened the role of the Bundestag in EU matters, spoke for or against a greater involvement of the German Landtage in EU affairs.
Whatever answers came up in the practical work, it became apparent that within the field of political science, the European role of the German Landtage has only very rarely been covered. Similarly, only little information and even less scientific studies about the European role of subnational parliaments in other European states has been available. The editors decided to try to close that gap and now the authors of this volume suggest possible theoretical frameworks for the political scientific research on subnational parliaments and draw upon empirical studies about the European work of subnational parliaments in six EU member states. The empirical studies were developed on the basis of an identical catalogue of central questions.
Important preparatory groundwork for the book was done at a conference in Eisenstadt, Austria, where proven experts in the research of Parliamentarism, Federalism and Europeanization were brought together to discuss their contributions. Distinguished experts on national parliaments and specific federal and regional systems respectively, kindly engaged themselves in the uncharted territory of the topic ‘subnational parliaments in EU matters’. In the course of the discussion, that was, thanks to the engagement of the ‘Foster Europe’ foundation, held in a very pleasant and stimulating atmosphere, it became apparent that the political role of subnational parliaments in the European context differs widely across EU states. Moreover, the opinions about whether a strengthening of subnational parliaments in the European Union is possible and desirable were similarly diverse, which is why ‘subnational parliaments in the European Union’ developed into a quite controversial topic during the conference.
The conference, as well as the book, would not have been possible without the exceptional and ongoing commitment and the Jean-Monnet-Funds provided by Gabriele Abels and her team, as well as the financial and personal support for the project by Stefan Lütgenau and ‘Foster Europe’. I also want to thank the authors of the volume for their profound work, who, with their individual contributions, created the first comparative analysis of the role of subnational parliaments in EU matters. Every author did not only apply the highest scientific standards in their contributions, but also demonstrated great patience and humour, making it a great pleasure to work together. For help during the last phase of the project, I want to thank Bernhard Schneider for his support concerning the layout and the “Vizerektorat für Forschung” of the University of Innsbruck for a part of the additional layout costs.
Innsbruck, June 2015
Annegret Eppler
‘(I)t is for each national Parliament or each chamber of a national parliament to consult, where appropriate, regional parliaments with legislative powers.’ This specific stipulation of Article 6 of Protocol No. 2 on Subsidiarity and Proportionality of the Lisbon Treaty lies at the heart of this book. With this provision the 2009 Lisbon Treaty opened a ‘window of opportunity’ for a specific subtype of regional or subnational assemblies, i.e. for those endowed with autonomous legislative powers, powers, seeking involvement in the subsidiarity monitoring process. This process, often called the Early Warning System (EWM), has become an integral part of EU policy-making. But what is the reality ‘behind’ it? How does it really affect these regional parliaments? What are its broader implications for the EU polity? This book addresses these questions from various perspectives.
First, it is important to consider what regions are and what regional parliaments are. In the EU context, the term region is quite ambiguous. It refers here to the meso-level in an EU member state, i.e., a sub-state polity positioned between the local/municipal and the national level. Some regions, however, consider themselves to be nations (e.g., Catalonia, Scotland). For this reason in this book the term ‘subnational’ is used to distinguish it from the local, national and supranational levels. Accordingly, regional parliaments serve as legislative assemblies located at this meso-level. Thus, we speak of ‘subnational parliaments’ in this book.
Regions have been interested in participation in EU affairs, dating back to the early 1990s and the Maastricht Treaty. These early activities were dominated by subnational governments. More recent activities do not come out of the blue; rather they have a longer history which established a ‘path’ of regional participatory practices. The Lisbon Treaty has brought significant changes. Based on insights from historical and sociological institutionalism, one can argue that the Protocol No. 2 stipulation opened a ‘window of opportunity’ in the sense that regions, especially subnational parliaments, now possess an instrument that they may choose to use, reinforced by a new norm favouring pro-active parliamentary behaviour. How subnational parliaments opt to respond to new incentives, e.g., by undertaking diverse reform processes and behavioural changes, varies. By and large, the reforms focus primarily on involvement in the EWM, but they also go beyond this mechanism. The aim is to adapt their institutional and cognitive structures in order to develop ‘regional EU capacity’ (Carter and Pasquier 2010: 297). This is important for all subnational parliaments. This capacity, however, does not include the ability to establish direct relations with EU institutions or to become an actor at EU level. It will affect the vertical territorial relations in the domestic political arena, i.e., the role of subnational parliaments vis-à-vis their subnational governments, their national parliament and the national government. Given the diversity of constitutional orders in the eight member states immediately affected by Article 6, the reform processes and their consequences will differ among a total of 74 subnational parliaments.2 The first thing to bear in mind when analysing these changes is the policy dimension, focusing on the policy sectors in which the subnational level has legislative competences; this differs among the eight member states based on their respective constitutional orders. Secondly, participation rights, i.e., access to European policy-making arenas, should not be confused with real impact. Impact assessment is still in its infancy; this book therefore concentrates on the institutional framework; it addresses some elements of behavioural-cognitive change but does not systematically investigate the actual impacts on policy.
The number of ‘regional parliaments with legislative powers’, 74 at present, is almost double the number of national parliaments and/or the number of chambers in national parliaments across all 28 EU member states.3 The literature on national parliaments and their role in European integration has flourished since the mid-1990s, especially in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty; there is now a vast array of Europeanization-inspired studies on national parliaments.4 The large group of subnational parliaments has not attracted wide attention thus far, however, while the literature on regionalization and the territorial impact of European integration on subnational parliaments comprises, at best, a footnote. This book attempts to overcome the prevailing ‘governmental fixation’ in the literature to date, by attending to such imbalances and locating subnational parliaments in the EU multi-level polity.
The investigation of their role in multi-level governance is linked to the intense debate about the democratic or legitimacy deficit afflicting international politics, in general, and the European Union, in particular. The need for full parliamentarization of the EU polity is a well-established strand in the deficit-oriented literature. Parliaments clearly lie at the heart of complex systems for securing democratic legitimacy through national representation since they function as the institutional embodiment of popular sovereignty. Yet, in politics beyond the nation state parliaments face new challenges, having lost they role as key actors. Contemporary government-parliament relations reflect an imbalance in favour of executive dominance; the EU itself offers a good example of this power shift. The decline in national parliamentary powers has not been compensated at the EU level by increasing powers for the European Parliament, resulting in a parliamentary legitimacy gap there. In response, national parliaments especially are widely perceived as ‘losers’ or, at best, as ‘latecomers’ to European integration (see Maurer and Wessels 2001). While national executives have adapted to Europeanized policy-making in ways that increase their influence on supranational policies, parliaments have faced greater difficulties in responding to Europeanization effects.
Overcoming this gap will require a solution that goes beyond a simple ‘either-or-model’; the Union needs to develop a more complex model of representative politics which strengthens the role of the European Parliament and national parliaments, thereby enhancing both representative pillars of democratic legitimacy upon which the EU as a polity sui generis must rest (cf. Benz 2003; Hurrelmann and Debardeleben 2009).
Recent empirical research attests that it is simplistic to fixate on a clear trend towards deparliamentarization. While the 1992 Maastricht Treaty offered non-binding declarations regarding national parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty transformed these into a binding protocol. The unsuccessful Constitutional Treaty of 2005 likewise foresaw an enhanced role for parliaments at all levels, from the supranational down to the regional level. The 2009 Lisbon Treaty turned these into a legally binding stipulation, highlighting the principle of representative democracy in Art. 10 TEU. Placing stronger emphasis on parliamentarization at the supranational level via the European Parliament and at national level via national parliaments, it also calls for stronger interparliamentary cooperation (Art. 5 and 12 TEU, and Protocol No. 1 on the role of national parliaments). One thus observes paradoxical trends, deparliamentarization and parliamentarization occurring within EU politics, which call for a more nuanced analysis a multiple levels that captures this complex phenomenon. So far, most empirical studies have either focused on the amazing evolution of the European Parliament or on disempowered national parliaments. The former has emerged as the clear winner of all treaty reforms since 1992 (Maastricht Treaty) in terms of gaining greater legislative control. The 2014 elections tell a story about the European Parliament’s own Leitbild intent on fostering a full-blown system of parliamentary rule under which even the selection of the European Commission president depends on the support of EP political party groups. A Commission candidate now participates in EP election campaign, serving as Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate), for his or her European party family (see Hobolt 2014).
There is moreover a growing body of literature on national parliaments in the 28 member states, addressing their involvement in EU affairs at the national and supranational levels.5 The question is how parliaments might best respond to changes induced by European integration, what Auel and Benz (2005) called ‘the politics of adaption’. New challenges centre on exercising parliamentary functions vis-à-vis national governments, the Europeanization of law-making, and the need to intensify interparliamentary cooperation at the EU level. The broader implications of these developments for parliamentary rule in the EU are widely discussed either in numerous single case or small-n comparative studies.
Empirical studies have had a profound effect on conceptual developments regarding parliamentary legitimacy. Conceptualized as a ‘multi-level system’ of governance since the 1990s, the multi-level paradigm has infiltrated different strands of EU research on parliaments. The terms ‘multi-level parliamentarism’ (Maurer 2002, 2009, 2011, 2012) and ‘multi-level parliamentary field’ (Crum and Fossum 2009, 2012, 2013b) call for deeper reflections on what parliamentarism, parliamentary rule, and parliamentary legitimacy mean in the light of ever more complex EU structures (see section 3.1). Although these works claim to be ‘multi’, they limit themselves, by and large, to two-level analyses. The third level of EU governance involving regional developments has been widely neglected thus far.
Wide disparities in the conceptualization of regions and their parliaments are the starting point for this book. Its objectives are threefold: First, on an empirical level our contributions will enrich the literature on parliaments across the European Union and their role in EU politics by adding the third level. Our comparative analysis is restricted to ‘regional parliaments with legislative powers’. Six detailed case studies outline the complex processes of adaptation, ultimately pinpointing several similarities and differences among these parliaments.
Secondly, on a theoretical level this book pulls together different strands of research, beginning with studies on parliaments and parliamentarization but also incorporating Europeanization, federalism and regionalisation studies. The adaptation strategies of subnational parliaments to EU governance occurs at this three-way intersection. All three fields, their specific research questions and core concepts are essential for analysing subnational parliaments as evolving EU actors.
Finally, this book investigates the democratic question. While the debate over the role of national parliaments in EU politics is directly related to the EU democratic deficit debate, this is less clear for subnational parliaments. Whether or not extending multi-level parliamentary participation down to the subnational level hold implications for the democratic nature of the EU polity, remains a contested question. The authors in this volume offer different answers to this important question. While some argue more in favour of a normative and empirical linkage between regionalization, subnational parliaments and democracy, others argue that subnational parliaments can and should not play a role in the multi-level parliamentary EU polity.
The following section discusses these three objectives in detail. Next I elaborate on empirical developments in six of the eight member states where regional parliaments with legislative competences exist. Section 3 then attends to the theoretical discussion of the EU polity as a multi-level parliamentary system. Section 4 sheds light on the relationship between parliamentarization and democratization with a focus on subnational parliaments. The final section then introduces the individual contributions to this volume.
The European Union Treaty of Lisbon has caused quite a stir among parliaments across Europe. Besides extending the powers of the European Parliament, which has been a regular feature of EU treaty revisions, the Lisbon Treaty also sought to increase national parliaments’ involvement in European Union affairs. In particular, the treaty has provided for an Early Warning Mechanism that gives national parliaments the power to object against EU draft legislation that threatens to violate the principle of subsidiarity and requires the European Commission to respond to these objections (Protocol No. 2 of the Lisbon Treaty). The reinforcement of national parliaments in the EU structure has led to a wave of institutional adaptations among national parliaments, both in their internal organization as well as in the coordination between them. Notable examples of this are by the development of an online platform for the exchange of parliamentary information (IPEX) and the increased cooperation in the network of national parliament representatives in Brussels (Knutelská 2013).
The Treaty Protocol on Subsidiarity does include some recognition of the role that subnational parliaments play in the EU structure. Thus, Article 6 of the Protocol explicitly indicates that national parliaments may consult regional parliaments with legislative powers on the issue of subsidiarity. In addition, Article 8 provides for the right of the EU Committee of the Regions to appeal to the EU Court of Justice when it considers that EU legislation infringes the principle of subsidiarity. Importantly, the reforms in the Lisbon Treaty and the specific suggestions in Protocol No. 2 have triggered various responses among regional parliaments. Most notable is probably the direct inclusion of regional parliaments in the Early Warning Mechanism that has (eventually) been secured in Belgium (Popelier and Vandenbruwaene 2011; see also Bursens et al. in this volume). In other countries (i.e., Spain, Italy, Finland, Austria) national and regional parliaments have agreed more general arrangements that allow regional parliaments to be heard on issues of subsidiarity (Popelier and Vandenbruwaene 2011; Borónska-Hryniewiecka 2013; see also country chapters in this volume). Again, in other countries (Germany, the UK), the initiative seems to have been primarily with individual regional parliaments to adapt their procedures to the EU decision-making cycle (see Abels on Germany and Högenauer on Scotland in this volume; see also Borónska-Hryniewiecka 2013). Interestingly, at the European level, the Committee of the Regions has mimicked the online information exchange platform used by national parliaments (IPEX) by establishing REGPEX which is to serve the same function for both regional parliaments and governments (http://extranet.cor.europa.eu/subsidiarity/regpex).
Thus, the Lisbon Treaty has truly had a multilevel impact on parliaments in the EU, as it strongly reverberates not only at the national but also at the regional level. At the same time though, there remain some important reservations to the direct interference of the EU arrangements with the regional level. As I already noted, the Subsidiarity Protocol explicitly leaves it to the discretion of national parliaments whether and how to involve regional parliaments, with legislative powers, in the Early Warning Mechanism. More generally, Article 4.2 of the EU Treaty explicitly provides that the Union shall respect the member states’ ‘national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government’. For that reason there is an in-built restraint in EU affairs addressing the regional level directly. For sure, the role of regions in European affairs has been recognized, most notably through the regional development fund and the establishment of the EU’s Committee of the Regions. However, to prevent intervening in domestic affairs, it is generally preferred for the EU to relate with regions only indirectly, through the national level. One reason is the enormous variation in the political status that regions enjoy across the member states. What is more, the EU wants to avoid taking sides in relations between the national and the regional levels, especially where these may be rather sensitive. For instance, if the EU were to recognize any kind of special political status in the relations that it maintains with Catalonia, it might well provoke the wrath of the Spanish government.
Against this background the central question that this paper addresses is whether or not the involvement of regional parliaments in EU affairs best runs through their national parliaments or whether and, if so, under which conditions they should be granted direct access rights to the EU decision-making process. This is essentially a normative question that can help to develop criteria for evaluating the actual involvement of regional parliaments in EU decision-making. At a deeper level, however, the question raises the issue of representative democracy in the complex, multilevel political system that the EU has come to be. Hence, any answer to it will need to rely on a specific conception of the appropriate character of multilevel democracy in the EU; in turn, answering the central question forces one to develop more clearly what exactly one assumes EU democracy to require.
In short, I will defend a rather cautious response to the question, arguing that in principle the involvement of regional parliaments in EU affairs best runs through national parliaments. This position hinges on the assumption that, in most cases, national democracy is special and qualitatively different from subnational democracy (or, indeed, from European democracy). For that reason, the burden of proof for justifying regional parliamentary powers that bypass national parliaments lies squarely upon those regional claims. However, I suggest two conditions that may justify the direct involvement of regional parliaments in EU decision-making, one institutional and one sociological. Yet, these are rather demanding tests and my suspicion is that they are only met by very few regional parliaments in the EU.
The next section first seeks to explicate my understanding of the distinctive character of multilevel democracy in the EU by drawing upon the concept of an EU ‘Multilevel Parliamentary Field’ (MLPF) that I have developed together with John Erik Fossum (Crum and Fossum 2009). This concept is organized around the claim that parliamentary sovereignty in the EU has come to be dispersed among multiple parliaments at the European and the national level. The second section then turns to the question whether this MLPF can be extended to regional parliaments and, more concretely, whether and when regional parliaments might be granted direct access opportunities to the EU decision-making process.
There are a variety of domestic and international factors that can contribute to or influence change in political institutions. Globalisation is but one international or external factor that has been invoked to explain changes in behaviour as well as institutions and policy in national political systems. While national-level institutions and political processes are often the focus of such analyses, this commonplace observation also applies with regard to parliaments at the subnational level. Change can be manifested in explicit modification of the institutional architecture and rules as well as the relationship between the subnational parliament and the relevant level of executive, both subnational as well as national. Some change may be reflected in the nature of policy areas that subnational parliaments are involved with processing, that is, new policy areas may come within their remit and others disappear or migrate to the national or even supranational level. The intent of political analysis, including comparative political analysis, is to explain how and why such change occurs, identifying the cause or causes in order to better understand the role subnational parliaments play in their wider national political system. One approach to understanding and explaining change in national political systems, in terms of institutions and policy and even competitive politics, is to consider how external factors may be a cause or join with other factors to trigger domestic political change. Considering the fact that the member states of the European Union are bound together horizontally in common rules and action and vertically in wide-ranging and deep relations with EU institutions as part of the EU policy-making process, it is fair to ask if the EU has had or does cause change in subnational parliaments in any of the formats mentioned above. It is precisely this question that motivates the Europeanization research agenda and is the subject of this chapter on subnational parliaments and Europeanization.
Europeanization research is concerned with identifying and explaining the causal role that the EU plays in domestic change, and for the most part this research agenda has had national domestic institutions and policy as its focus (Bulmer and Lequesne 2013; Ladrech 2010). As prominent actors in a national political system, it is not surprising that parliaments have in fact been included in the Europeanization research agenda. There are several areas of parliamentary activity that Europeanization research has engaged: parliamentary scrutiny of legislation, legislative-executive relations, normative considerations of the impact on parliamentary democracy (Holzhacker and Albaek 2007), internal structural changes to committees, and an explicit consideration whether or not alleged constraints on parliaments constitute a ‘deparliamentarization’ or whether the so-called Delors contention that 80 % of national legislation will be Europeanised is in reality a ‘myth’ (O’Brennan and Raunio 2007; Brouard et al. 2012).
What is somewhat surprising is the fact that these studies have almost all had the national parliament as the exclusive focus of analysis. Subnational parliaments for the most part have escaped such scrutiny. Yet the ‘subnational’ as a level of analysis is not a blind spot in Europeanization research; for example, a substantial interest has been demonstrated in federal member states such as Germany and Belgium, or regionalised member states such as Spain and Italy. Even so, the focus has been admittedly on the subnational executive as part of an analysis of changing centre–periphery studies where institutions are prioritised, or policy change where decision-makers may necessarily include subnational government as well as the national government (Bache 2008). However, when it comes precisely to the question of whether or not there has been an impact of the EU upon subnational parliaments, the response is notable for its absence.
This chapter asks why there has been an absence of research from a Europeanization perspective on subnational parliaments and suggests three reasons. It then proceeds, in the main section, to advance the outline of a Europeanization research agenda for exactly such a study. It is by no means an exhaustive account, and other researchers may add additional variables and dimensions, but it is indeed a field of enquiry whose time has come for a concerted research effort, as the other contributions in this volume attest.
Does federalism promote democracy and how does it impact subnational parliamentarianism? This is the leading question of this chapter. In normative theories, it has become a kind of truism that federalism facilitates democracy (Hamilton et al. 1989). Democracy, for its part, is seen as a necessary condition to ensure the vitality of federations (Watts 2008). Although a positive impact of federalism on democracy is often asserted, scholarly research has become increasingly cautious about jumping to such conclusions without sufficient empirical grounds. Until now, few studies have systematically devoted their attention as to how both principles interact in reality (Benz 2009a; Filippov and Shvetsova 2013). Research on this topic remains a difficult task because researchers encounter enormous difficulties when drawing general conclusions. Each federal case is singular with respect to its genesis, its institutional architecture and the social embeddedness of federal institutions. In such complex systems many variables interact. Democracy can be classified into different types as well, with most political systems featuring combinations of different subtypes, such as representative and direct democracy, forms of associative or deliberative democracy, consociational democracy, etc. Investigating the interdependencies of both principles therefore requires a precise specification of which type of democracy and federalism and which combinations analyses are focusing on. Overall, the exact effects are complicated.
In this article, I am particularly interested in the relationship between federalism and parliamentary democracy on the subnational level. I will conceptualize some basic ideas, aiming to clarify the role of subnational parliaments in federal democracies. In general, I assume that certain types of federalism match up to just specific forms of democracy. Some linkages are compatible with each other; others even produce democratic defects or weaken federalism as a constitutional principle. Specifying this argument, I suppose that subnational parliaments are better able to fulfill basic parliamentary functions, if parliamentary democracy is combined with a federal system that is based on voluntary cooperation but largely avoids obligatory negotiations (Zintl 1992; Kropp 2010). I will spell this out by focusing on the legislative and the scrutiny functions. As a starting point, I will offer a basic typology of federalism which is helpful to further distinguish between voluntary and obligatory federal negotiations. I argue that this differentiation provides a feasible angle for analyzing the challenges subnational parliaments face in federal democracies. In the third section, remedies soothing the ‘decline of regional parliamentarianism’ are reconsidered, showing that most of them encounter specific limits. By discussing five ways to strengthen subnational parliaments in federations, I will show that each way to strengthen regional parliaments causes unintended side effects either with respect to the input or to the output legitimacy. Finally, some research gaps are briefly outlined.
What role should regional or subnational parliaments play in modern European political architecture? This pertinent question has been asked more frequently in recent years, motivated in part by the more general debate concerning the powers and functions of national legislatures in the European Union (EU). Studies on subnational parliaments have mainly examined the question through the lens of multi-level governance, according to which regional parliaments and other subnational actors are less constrained by their national governments than before. This research has almost exclusively adopted a bottom-up perspective, analyzing the involvement of subnational parliaments in EU affairs in their own countries and the contacts regional legislatures have with each other and with EU institutions.
Significantly, case studies on Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom provide also plenty of evidence of domestic constitutional and political constraints that stand in the way of more effective regional parliamentary participation in EU governance (Kiiver 2006b; Abels and Eppler 2011; Griglio 2012). National governments may have good reasons not to support the role of regional bodies: their involvement can complicate or delay domestic decision-making, either because of divergent political preferences (regional and national levels often have different parliamentary majorities) or because there is institutional rivalry between subnational and national levels of government. It is plausible to claim that similar considerations apply to national parliaments that may have their own reasons not to champion the cause of their subnational counterparts.
Hence this chapter adopts a top-down perspective, focusing on the incentives and preferences of national MPs regarding the appropriate role of regional parliaments in the EU. The main argument of the chapter is that national legislatures do not actively promote the role of subnational parliaments and that they have in fact adopted institutional arrangements which deliberately exclude the latter from more effective and direct participation in EU politics.
The argument develops as follows: The next section discusses the incentive structure of national parliaments and explains why we should expect to find considerable variation between them concerning the rights of subnational parliaments. Based on Convention and the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) documents, the empirical section analyses how national parliaments view the role of subnational parliaments. The final section concludes by summarizing the results and discussing their practical and normative implications.
The Lisbon Treaty reinforced the subsidiarity principle monitoring mechanisms, giving a new role to national parliaments and in turn to regional parliaments with legislative powers. In the EU-28, eight member states comprise a total of 74 regional parliaments with legislative powers: Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. This chapter looks at the implementation of the Early Warning System (EWS) by the regional parliaments. Four years of implementation of the EWS by the regional parliaments with legislative powers in Europe shows that the usage of this instrument differs widely from one parliament to another. It struggles with different conceptions of the subsidiarity principle and varied levels of interest, ambitions and even capacities. The analysis of the procedure in practice requires taking the role played by the European Commission and Parliament into account.
I argue that the dynamic is ambivalent. On the one hand, there is the danger of a downward spiral of progressive bureaucratisation of the process and increasing frustration of the involved actors. On the other hand, the virtue is to enhance political debates in those regional parliaments that possess weak Europeanised behaviour, and to promote interparliamentary cooperation, which did not exist before. The EWS is raising awareness within the European institutions, national and regional parliaments on the importance of early and adequate scrutiny of legislative proposals. In some cases, it mainstreams a subsidiarity culture in parliamentary debates and emphasises the importance for national and also regional parliaments to act as a counterbalance in the EU legislative process. In addition, both the constructive attitude of the different institutions implicated and the outcomes of the first two yellow card procedure shed light on the potentials of the EWS, also at the regional level. Overall, I argue that regional parliaments are experiencing a sort of smart evolution: many of the initial expectations have been diminished and the practical implementation is being rationalized, with a growing awareness of the numerous conditions set within the EWS impeding the production of visible outcomes, but also with a salient attentiveness of the potentials of the instrument.
The pre-Lisbon Treaty period is widely perceived as a period of deparliamentarization, with the role of national parliaments limited to national control and participation rights primarily aimed at scrutinising the activities of national ministers in the Council, and with this, indirect parliamentary control losing its significance due to the extension of majority voting in the Council. Regional or subnational parliaments were rarely, if at all, involved in EU affairs and decisions.
In addition, the globalization and internationalisation of markets putting increasing pressure on EU economies is seen as a risk undermining national sovereignty and national democracy. The intergovernmental response to the sovereign-debt crisis and the Troika mechanism is seen as undermining a proper involvement of national and regional parliaments concerned as well as the European Parliament.
The 2009 Lisbon Treaty has introduced new powers and responsibilities for national parliaments through the Early Warning Mechanism (EWM). In addition, regional parliaments, mentioned for the first time in EU primary law, have increased their responsibilities. Regional parliaments with legislative powers are involved in the EWM through the possible consultation by their respective national parliament. This involvement strengthens their role in the EU decision-making process. The European Semester52 and new economic governance is evolving with the objective of increased policy coordination between national and European actions. The new procedures lead to more accountability of national governments towards the EU and towards national parliaments and the European Parliament. In discussions on the completion process towards a genuine Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) particular attention must be paid to democratic legitimacy and accountability (Van Rompuy 2012).
This article analyses changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty for national and regional parliaments and the role of the Committee of the Regions. It explores the limits and challenges in this context in particular for regional parliaments. It analyses the new European economic governance and explores the evolving role of national and regional parliaments in this framework in the view of the Committee of the Regions (CoR).
Before Austria’s accession to the EU in 1995, there were quite some debates about the effect this might have on the standing of its nine federal states (Bundesländer). Over the years, however, these concerns have turned out as largely unsubstantiated; Austrian states actually have been quite successful in securing their interests in the EU’s system of multi-level governance (Fallend 2002: 206; Bußjäger 2005). Nevertheless, the role of the state parliaments (Landtage) in these regard has been rather limited throughout the years. While Austrian federalism, and especially participation in federal law-making, has generally been dominated very much by state executives, the role of state parliaments in EU affairs was even smaller and their abilities to influence the outcome on the European level (or at least the Austrian position in the process) highly depended on the willingness of their respective governments to cooperate (Aigner 2006: 971).