David Judge

The failure of national parliaments

National parliaments are commonly held to have ‘failed’ in their dealings with European institutions and in their impact upon the Communitys legislative process. This article provides a ‘revisionist’ analysis to challenge this ‘orthodoxy’. First, national parliaments have provided the legitimating frame within which the development of the European Community has been able to take place. Second, there has been no absolute, inexorable decline in the influence exerted by national parliaments in the EC policy process. If anything, events since the signing of the Treaty on European Union in December 1991 suggest that national parliaments have bargained increased powers of scrutiny over EC legislation. Third, it needs to be noted that there is a ‘dual democratic deficit’ within the European Union. The problem of the ‘democratic deficit’ is evident not solely in the accretion of decision‐making power at the European level, but also in the fact that national parliaments within their own states exert limited contr...

‘Predestined to save the earth’: The environment committee of the European parliament

Despite an increase in the influence of the European Parliament in the decision making process of the European Communities in recent years some commentators still maintain that the EPs impact on EC legislation remains marginal. Taking the Environment Committee of the European Parliament as its focus this article assesses the contribution made by the EP to EC environmental policy. While it is often asserted that the EPs legislative role in relation to environmental policy began with the Single European Act, in fact the EP performed a legislative role, including the right of initiative, before 1987; a role subsequently enhanced by the SEA. Tracing the decision making process through the various stages of initiation, consultation, cooperation and implementation, and using case studies to illustrate the Committees contribution to this process, the variable impact of the EP upon EC environmental policy is revealed. The role of the Environment Committee as a promoter of ‘environmentalism’ within EC policy an...

Ripples or waves: The European parliament in the European community policy process

Abstract To date many assessments of the influence of the European Parliament have been general in nature: dealing with parliament as an undifferentiated entity and its policy impact in generalised terms. What this article argues is that the policy contribution of the EP cannot be adequately assessed in aggregate or absolute terms. Instead, recognition of the contingency of EP influence needs to be acknowledged. If the measurement of legislative influence is an enormously complex undertaking at national level, it is even more so in the context of EC ‘competitive federalism’. This article is concerned, therefore, with the ‘how’ ‐ the extent to which the EP exerts policy influence within specific policy areas; and the ‘why’ ‐ the variables that help to explain the variation in policy influence. Through case studies in the policy fields of the environment and research and technological development the differentials of influence exerted by the EP are examined.

‘Relais actors’ and co-decision first reading agreements in the European Parliament: the case of the advanced therapies regulation

The processing of the advanced therapies regulation is of particular interest to scholars of the European Unions (EU) legislative process and students of the European Parliament (EP) because it provides a case study which throws light upon assumptions commonly made about the role of the EPs ‘relais actors’, the promotion of consensus-building within and between parliamentary committees, and the development of intraorganizational rules in response to early agreements in the co-decision procedure. An examination of the EPs processing of the advanced therapies dossier provides an ‘unusual’ but vivid illustration of how the identification of committee rapporteurs as the most important parliamentary ‘relais actors’ fails to capture the increasingly important roles performed by shadow rapporteurs. Significantly, the ‘unusual’ occurrences associated with the processing of the advanced therapies regulation came at a crucial juncture in the reconsideration of the EPs intraorganizational rules in relation to early agreements and the subsequent adoption of new Rules of Procedure in 2009.

Early days: the European parliament, codecision and the European union legislative process post-Maastricht

Since the European Parliaments first vote on a Council common position submitted under the co-decision procedure in January 1994 the practice of co-decision has been scrutinized carefully within Parliament and the other European Union (EU) institutions. However, such scrutiny has produced differing interpretations. This article seeks to assess these respective claims by analysing the first thirty-two legislative proposals processed under co-decision, and so to make an initial assessment of the legislative impact of the European Parliament under the new procedure. Under co-decision Parliament is a more equal partner in the EUs legislative process, and now has a rightful place alongside Council in several important policy areas - despite the weighting of the procedure towards Council. Certainly, informal inter-institutional linkages have expanded as a result of co-decision and, whatever their qualitative effect, there has been an undeniable quantitative increase in the interactions between Parliament and Council. The net result of the dialogue between Parliament and Council is the confirmation of an increasingly bipartite bargaining process and this, in turn, has placed the Commission in a considerably more ambiguous, and weaker, position than in the co-operation or consultation procedures.

No simple dichotomies : lobbyists and the European parliament

To call lobbyists of the European Parliament ‘unelected legislators’ is somewhat misleading. Similarly, to talk of ‘inspired legislation’, where laws, or more particularly amendments to legislation, are ‘written by a lobby group from the civil society and more or less rubber stamped by a public body’1 is to over-simplify a complex and mediated relationship between elected ‘legislators’ and unelected ‘interest representatives’. Indeed, in the case of the European Union (EU), identifying a single ‘public body’ as a ‘legislator’ is problematic in itself as all three major institutions – Commission, Council and European Parliament – perform legislative roles. Moreover, securing a single, clearly defined imprint of a ‘rubber stamp’ on legislation is difficult given the inter-institutional bargaining that results in blurred and smudged legislative imprints at the best of times.

Member-constituency linkages in the Hungarian parliament

Linkage has traditionally been identified as a central function of legislatures. Given the Parliaments initial institutional preeminence in Hungary after 1990 and underdeveloped linkages through organized interests or stable and cohesive parties, the linkage function of elected representatives was of special importance. This article examines the pattern of MP constituency linkage in the first democratically elected Hungarian Parliament (1990), the political context within which this pattern was established, and the conceptions MPs held of their representative focus.

The Life and Times of the European Union’s Co-operation Procedure

Using the analytical headings provided by John Fitzmaurice in his initial analysis of the co-operation procedure in 1988, this article examines the perceptions of leading actors within the European Parliament (EP), and some of the officials most closely involved in the detailed discussion of legislative proposals within the Commission, about the co-operation procedure in the 1989–94 parliament. It explores not only the assessment of ‘insiders’ of the EP’s legislative ‘effectiveness’ in this period, but also maps out how key participants viewed the changing interinstitutional patterns attendant upon the co-operation procedure. The interviews in this study provide a unique perspective on what Fitzmaurice terms the ‘ratchet principle’ of institutional reform, and contribute to the historical record of institutional innovation within the EU.

Representation and austerity politics : attitudes of Greek voters and elites compared

Drawing on surveys of voters and MPs in Greece, this article analyses elite–mass interaction on key policy (austerity, European integration, immigration) and ideological issues after the 2012 elections. We find that while for the government parties, New Democracy and PASOK, the level of congruence is quite high, MPs from opposition parties (SYRIZA, Golden Dawn) place themselves in more exposed positions in comparison with their voters. The observed substantial variation in the intensity and direction of congruence, across parties and issue preferences in Greece, reinforces the view that the dimensionality of political contestation is not reducible to a single ideological dimension.

The 'pondlife' of executive agencies: Parliament and informatory accountability

Agencies attract the attention of MPs unequally. In focusing upon ‘informnatory responsibility’, as a prerequisite of ministerial responsibility in an era of executive agencies, the article reveals that there is no simple model or pattern of informatory responsibility, whether measured by parliamentary questions, letters from MPs, or extent of contact between ministers and agencies. Those agencies which attract the sustained interest of MPs often require elaborate mechanisms of response to deal with the sheer volume of questions and requests for information. In tumrn, this may have pathological organisational consequences for working practices and staffing tasks particularly if the agency is responsible for policy delivery in a politically sensitive area. Conversely, those agencies which attract little or no interest from MPs raise the neglected question of what does ministerial responsibility ‘mean’ in these circumstances? The article concludes that a more exacting perspective of inforinatory accountability is needed: one that places the emphasis not only upon the regularity of the flow of information and upon the consistency of explanation to parliament, but also takes into account the interactions of agencies and their ‘constituencies of accountability’.