ENHANCING NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS

The Centre for European Reform proposes the following to enhance the role of National Parliaments. "Some of the EU’s waning legitimacy stems from its poor performance: unemployment remains high, many economies have been in recession, and leaders have quarrelled while failing to come up with convincing cures for the eurozone’s ailments. But there is also the problem of how power is held to account in the EU’s complex and opaque decision-making procedures. In the eurozone, in particular, national governments and parliaments are losing their ability to set budgets and other economic policies, as power flows to EU institutions. When the eurozone takes decisions on bail-outs, there is no accountability at EU level.

Therefore there is a strong case for enhancing the role of national parliamentarians in EU and eurozone governance. MPs often have more legitimacy than MEPs, because they are closer to voters and elected on a higher turn-out. If they were more involved in the EU they might start to consider the wider European interest and, as they became more knowledgeable, be less willing to blame ‘Brussels’ for every regulation they dislike. National parliamentarians are also well-placed to take a view on whether EU legislation complies with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. National parliaments need to learn to co-operate more closely.

The Lisbon treaty created the ‘yellow card’ procedure, whereby if a third or more of national parliaments believe that a Commission proposal proposal breaches subsidiarity, they may during the eight weeks that follow the proposal’s publication produce a reasoned opinion and ask that it be withdrawn. The Commission must then withdraw the proposal or justify why it intends to proceed. The next Commission should undertake to give national parliaments 12 rather than eight weeks to produce reasoned opinions and to treat any future yellow cars as a red card, meaning that it would not proceed with a measure that a third of national parliaments considered in breach of subsidiarity. A small treaty change could turn the yellow card procedure into a formal red card procedure so that say half of the national parliaments could oblige the Commission to withdraw a proposal. Another treaty amendment could allow red cards to be shown if national parliaments believe that the principle of proportionality has been breached. A similar system could enable national parliaments to club together to make the Commission propose the withdrawal of a redundant or unnecessary existing EU law. The principle could be extended so that a third or more of national parliaments could require that the Commission legislate in a particular area.

A more fundamental reform could be to implement a forum for national parliamentarians in Brussels. The forum’s workload should be modest, so that the best and brightest MPs would want to participate. It should not duplicate the legislative work of the European Parliament. Rather the forum should ask questions about, and write reports on, those aspects of the EU and eurozone governance that involve unanimous decision making and in which the European Parliament plays no significant role. A national parliamentary forum could become a check on the European Council. It could challenge EU actions and decisions that concern foreign and defence policy or cooperation on policing and counter terrorism. On eurozone matters, the new body could- meeting in reduced format- without MPs from non-euro countries question the Eurogroup president and give opinions on bail-out packages. The forum could start work as an informal body, and if it is proved useful, be endowed with formal powers such as electing the Eurogroup president through a new treaty.