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International audience; National parliaments have long been neglected in the European integration process, although the Lisbon Treaty significantly improved their status. Nonetheless, this article argues that there is still some margin for improvement. This article explains why this situation must be urgently remedied and proposes some pragmatic solutions to this end. It is argued that national parliaments should receive more information directly, that mechanisms to guarantee the collective accountability of the Council and the European Council should be introduced, and that certain safeguards are needed to ensure a level playing field among national parliaments in their relationship to EU institutions and bodies. This would help to address the existing imbalance between the way in which today's EU operates, and national parliaments' limited possibility to participate at the EU level.

The European Parliament (EP)’s role in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has always been rather limited. Its prerogatives were somewhat reinforced after the Euro crisis, but its role in policy implementation remained minimal. However, because of the pandemic, the level of integration at the supranational level has significantly increased as a result of, among others, the adoption of unique instruments such as the SURE instrument, Next Generation EU and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RFF). This article considers to what extent the EP’s role in EMU has been reinforced as a result of these measures. It finds that the EP was regrettably reserved only a limited role in the operationalisation of the RRF and an even lesser role in other instruments, but that legal and political constraints made any other outcome unlikely. This article argues in favour of an increased use of the existing instruments by both the EP and national parliaments, as well as a reinforcement of interparliamentary cooperation. A far more extensive empowerment of the EP would be required if temporary and exceptional developments that occurred in the EMU during the pandemic were to become more entrenched.

Following the Great Financial Crisis, European Union (EU) rules in the area of banking supervision have become ever more strongly influenced by the (formally non-binding) standards developed by international financial fora, chief of which are the G20 and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. European representation in these fora fluctuates, as varying, though, reduced groups of individual Member States are involved directly alongside EU institutions and bodies. Taking the example of the Basel Accords, this article sets forth to examine how the European participation in those fora is articulated, whilst also assessing the existing mechanisms of democratic accountability. Indeed, in view of the important constraints these standards impose on European legislators, it is of utmost importance that they be involved early on when they are defined to avoid any democratic accountability gap from arising.

Following the Great Financial Crisis, the European Central Bank’s functions have been significantly altered. It is now involved in the functioning of a variety of European Union bodies and agencies, new powers in the field of banking supervision have been attributed to it and it has resorted to unconventional monetary policy. Such a concentration of powers arguably gives rise to issues of accountability and institutional balance within the European Union: (i) the resulting institutional framework is particularly complex and difficult to understand; (ii) the numerous functions the European Central Bank assumes makes it increasingly difficult to identify in which arena(s) it should be held to account for which action; and (iii) its role in the different bodies or agencies may vary in theory and in practice, which, in turn, influences the degree to which the European Central Bank should be held to account. This article aims at showing to what extent the European Central Bank’s role has multiplied and diversified with a view to assess how it is held to account in those different instances, and what the consequences are for the European Central Bank’s democratic accountability, primarily towards the European Parliament, as well as towards the Council of the European Union and national parliaments where applicable.

This introductory article sets the ground for the analysis performed in the articles included in this Special Issue. It shows why a new analysis of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s accountability is required by referring to recent developments, and by underlining how much the ECB’s role and standing have changed since its creation 20 years ago. Indeed, its resorting to unconventional monetary policies in response to the recent economic and financial crisis, as well as the creation of the Banking Union, have significantly affected the ECB. This introduction also recalls the main elements of the debate on the balance between accountability and independence, and shows how this balance has evolved. On the basis of the findings of the articles included in this Special Issue, some conclusions and hypotheses as to the way forward are formulated.

In his volume on the Treaty of Amsterdam, Francisco Lucas Pires provided a thorough and critical analysis of the then recently approved Treaty. In particular, he examined whether the Treaty of Amsterdam marked the shift from a European integration process focused on the market to a European society, and he showed extraordinary capacities to foresee how the European Union (EU) would develop from then onwards. This chapter first examines Francisco Lucas Pires’ views on the Treaty of Amsterdam and the single currency in general and assesses the evolution the EU has witnessed since. The following part of this analysis is devoted specifically to the study of the features of the EU’s economic institutional governance contained in the postscript). The final section concludes.

Interparliamentary conferences and other permanent forums for interparliamentary cooperation are blossoming in the European Union. Following more or less lengthy negotiations between national and European parliamentarians, two new conferences and a new joint parliamentary scrutiny group for Europol have been created since 2012. Against this background, this article examines to what extent the Joint parliament scrutiny group is comparable to the previously existing interparliamentary conferences. Beyond that, it asks the question as to whether any better-defined guidelines or procedures could be adopted to rationalise the process of creation of new forums for interparliamentary cooperation. It makes some concrete proposals in that direction.

National parliaments were long absent from the European integration process. Following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the economic and monetary crisis and the beginning of the Juncker presidency, an important intensification in national parliaments’ relationship to European institutions can be observed. This begs the question as to whether national parliaments have now become self-standing actors in European governance. The present analysis shows that relationships as they currently exist do not allow to qualify parliaments as ‘actors’, though they are undoubtedly more engaged in this domain than they were before.

Following the adoption of Eurocrisis Law, the European Parliament (EP) has been strongly empowered in the Economic and Monetary Union. It may intervene mostly in three ways: by the means of control mechanisms around Euro summits, during Economic Dialogues and in the framework of the European Parliamentary Week and the Interparliamentary conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance. An analysis of the practice reveals however that thus far this empowerment has remained largely theoretical; The EP could still better exploit the potential of its newly attributed capacities.The reform proposals currently under discussion were found to bear some potential if adequately used, despite being (still) of a soft nature like the ones currently existing.

This chapter provides an analysis of the role of the European Commission and the member states in governing differentiation in European integration - both historically and vis-a-vis the ‘Brexit process’. It ultimately asks how the balance of powers of the Commission and the member states in this regard could evolve in the future. Whereas the administrative capacity of the Commission’s structure and administration are crucial for the implementation of differentiated integration, it is only the EU’s member states’ governments which can provide sufficient impetus - if not legitimacy - for triggering differentiation and thus shaping the future design of the EU. This chapter explores how the institutional dynamics in processes of differentiation have developed over time, assesses the prospective roles that the Commission and the member states could assume in triggering further differentiation in a ‘post-Brexit’ Union, and eventually proposes that coordination and cooperation between the Commission and governments of member states are likely to increase in the future.

On 6 December 2017, the European Commission presented its policy package on ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union’. Some of the proposals it entails aim at improving the democratic accountability of the governance of the Eurozone. This paper examines how exactly this objective is supposed to be achieved, i.e. how national and European Parliaments are meant to be involved in this field. In doing so, it first considers the mechanisms that currently exist to this end and recalls some of the proposals previously made with the same goal, e.g. creation of a Eurozone sub-committee within the European Parliament or of a Eurozone parliament. Then, the proposals made by the Commission to enhance democratic accountability in the EMU are analysed, and it is contended that, overall, they are coherent with the content of the whole package, with previous statements, and with the interests of the EP. Yet, they appear insufficient, in particular because the involvement of national parliaments remains very limited.

The newly established European Banking Union has introduced a unique accountability framework of the European Central Bank vis-a-vis the European Parliament (EP), but also vis-a-vis national parliaments, in the form of Banking Dialogue. The ECB was thus far held to account for its monetary policy actions by the EP in the framework of the long-existing Monetary Dialogue. However, some shortcomings have become apparent in this procedure, especially with the economic crisis. Beyond this, the recent attribution of new competences to the ECB calls for a reflection as to the accountability mechanisms in place to control its actions. Based on an empirical and normative analysis of both types of dialogues, we contend that the Banking Dialogue could serve as a model to reform the Monetary Dialogue to enhance the legitimacy of the ECB's actions and of the EU as a whole.

The European integration process has long been characterised by the predominance of national executive powers. National parliaments were recognised as European actors after several decades only, in the Maastricht Treaty first and to an even larger extent in the Lisbon Treaty. Parliaments were hence long dependent on national constitutional, legal and administrative arrangements to be able to participate in EU affairs. This paper analyses how national parliaments (and their members) have reacted to the challenge the European integration process has represented for them while it also takes due account of the role other institutions, such as constitutional courts, have played in this field. It is argued that while these arrangements may have been successful in allowing national parliaments to play a greater role in this field, they should remain temporary for they are characterised by uncertainty and instability and make it generally difficult for citizens to follow up on national parliaments' actions and to be fully informed. © 2016 Diane Fromage, published by De Gruyter Open 2016.

This paper analyses the role of regional parliaments with legislative competences in the Early Warning System (EWS) six years after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. To this end, the question of the regional participation is looked at from a broad perspective including the (potential) participation of regional parliaments in the Political Dialogue with the European Commission, be it through their national counterparts or with the Commission directly. This question is particularly relevant as even national parliaments tend to be less often involved in the Political Dialogue with the Commission over the last years and as the EWS has only been activated twice since the 1 December 2009.This analysis finds, first of all, that not all regional parliaments have the guarantee that their opinion in matters of subsidiarity, or more generally on an EU topic, will be taken into account by their national parliaments. An empirical study of 17 out of 74 regional parliaments existing in the EU further shows that, globally, regional parliaments contribute fairly little to both the EWS and the Political Dialogue and they only marginally exchange with the Commission directly. Against this background, the present study makes some proposals for reform in closure, in particular to make the best use of the sometimes scarce regional parliamentary resources available.

The contributions collected in this Max Weber Working Papers Special Issue were first delivered at a conference held at the European University Institute and jointly organised by the Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies and the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies in March 2015 on ‘Parliaments and parliamentary elections in Europe’. Following the transformations undertaken by the European and national parliaments after the Treaty of Lisbon, the 2014 European elections, the unprecedented politicization and the challenges posed to representative democracy by the Eurozone crisis, the Special Issue aims to investigate three intertwined themes. (I) Parliamentary representation: European and national at the same time?; (II) national parliaments in EU policymaking; and (III) dynamics of Euroscepticism and its effects on law-making. In particular the papers deal with the ability of parliaments to democratically represent people in the European Union today and to affect the European integration process, with the asymmetric involvement of national parliaments in the EU, their dynamics of cooperation as well as between them and the European Parliament, and finally, with the implications on EU democratic legitimacy of recent developments regarding parliamentary input provided at a very early stage of the European policymaking. Other issues, such as transposition and the representation of eurosceptics in the European Parliament are also dealt with.

En la actualidad, los derechos de los ciudadanos de la Unión Europea están garantizados por tres instrumentos: el Convenio Europeo de Derechos Humanos (CEDH), la Carta de los Derechos Fundamentales de la Unión Europea, y sus constituciones nacionales. Adicionalmente, se prevé la próxima adhesión de la Unión Europea al CEDH. En este artículo, se tratará de relatar cuál ha sido la evolución hasta llegar a la protección actual anclada en textos nacionales, supra e internacionales. Se destacará cómo el proyecto de integración europeo ha evolucionado de un enfoque meramente económico a otro protector y promotor de Derechos. Más allá, se examinará como estos estándares de protección se aplican a las minorías en el territorio europeo.

International audience

International audience; This collection of contributions was prepared in honour of our dear colleague and (former) supervisor, Jacques Ziller (also former Professor of the EU (1998-2007)). In these essays, those who were inspired by Jacques, or who have worked closely with him over the years, share their reflections and testimonies on issues of comparative and EU (administrative) law.

International audience; This chapter analyses the evolution of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s institutional structures – which it finds to have indeed been great since its creation – and compares them to that of other European Union institutions and bodies. It also shows that the dual national and European nature of the National Central Banks and their governors has given rise to tensions and varying dynamics between supranational and national logics. The analysis provided concludes among other things that the institutional logics that govern today’s ECB are somewhere between those of the supranational Commission and the intergovernmental Council, although in some ways the Supervisory Board could also be compared to EU agencies. It also outlines what the existing challenges might be in terms of accountability as a result of the existing (varying) institutional structures of the ECB.

Has executive predominance in EU-related matters disappeared ten years after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty? How have executive-legislative relations in the EU evolved over a crisis-ridden decade, from the financial and migration crises, to Brexit or the latest covid-19 pandemic? The Lisbon Treaty could be expected to lead to the re-balancing of powers in favour of parliaments, for it significantly enhanced the roles of both the European Parliament and national parliaments. A decade later, the contributions to this edited volume examine, for the first time in such an extensive breadth and from a multi-level and cross-policy perspective, whether this has actually materialised. They highlight that diverging tendencies may be observed, and that important variations over time have occurred, depending particularly on the occurrence of crises. As stated in the fascinating epilogue by Peter Lindseth (University of Connecticut School of Law), this is an "admirably coherent collective volume, whose contributions provide an excellent overview of key aspects of executive-legislative relations in the European system since the Treaty of Lisbon". This edited volume will hence be of interest to both academics and practitioners interested in future reforms designed at the European and national levels to improve the EU's democratic quality