Original scientific paper
PARLIAMENTS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE PROCESS OF RAPPROCHEMENT WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION
Andreas Maurer
; Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin, Deutschland
Abstract
The author looks into the issue how to strengthen the role of national parliaments in the process of accession to the EU. In that process, the national parliaments of the candidate countries can draw on the experience of the EU member countries. The intensification of the EU integration has resulted in the so called democratic deficit. This means that national parliaments have been losing control over an increasing portion of the regulatory issues which are being taken over by the EU executive bodies, primarily the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, whose decisions are not swayed by the political clout and the control mechanisms of the national or the European parliament. That is why the EU member countries have been developing new mechanisms that will strengthen their participatory and controlling competence versus the EU executive bodies. Such mechanisms are most developed in the parliaments of the Scandinavian countries, whose experience serves as a model to other parliaments. Also important are the emergence of some new mechanisms of cooperation with the European parliament as well as the establishment of a permanent interparliamentary cooperation. Among the latter, the Conference of Parliamentary Committees specialized for EU affairs stands out; the so-called COSAC (Conférance des Organes spécialisées dans les affaires communautaires, /Conference of the Community and European Affairs Committees of Parliaments of the EU/), established in 1989. The author concludes that the candidate countries’ parliaments should timely devise certain specialized and cooperative structures that will enable them to be on equal footing with their governments and the EU executive bodies in the process of decision-making.
Keywords
European Union; European parliament; parliament; accession to European Union; Council of Ministers; European Commission; inter-parliamentary cooperation; democratic deficit
Hrčak ID:
23133
URI
Publication date:
26.1.2004.
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