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Beyond subsidiarity: the indirect effect of the Early Warning System on national parliamentary scutiny in European Union affairs

2016; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13501763.2016.1146323

1466-4429

Eric Miklin,

Policy Transfer and Learning

ABSTRACTThe Early Warning System (EWS) introduced with the Lisbon Treaty allows national parliaments to directly intervene in European Union (EU) decision-making for the first time. Most scholars expected participation in the EWS and the system's impact to be modest, though, as the instrument provides parliamentary parties with little added value from a policy- or vote-seeking perspective. Running counter to that view, this article argues that parliaments are under normative pressure to engage in the EWS, which may have significantly increased the attention and resources they devote to EU issues. By triggering policy learning, this again may have improved parliamentary attempts to actively shape EU decision-making more generally and beyond subsidiarity. I expect both effects to be especially strong on chambers that had been comparatively inactive in EU scrutiny before Lisbon. The arguments’ plausibility is demonstrated through a study of post-Lisbon changes in the Austrian Nationalrat and the Dutch Tweede Kamer.KEY WORDS: AustriaEarly Warning SystemEuropean Unionnational parliamentsNetherlandssociological institutionalism AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Michael Blauberger, Franz Fallend, Berthold Rittberger and Rik de Ruiter, as well as three anonymous referees and two members of the JEPP editorial board for their helpful comments.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes on contributorEric Miklin is assistant professor of Austrian politics in comparative European perspective at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Address for correspondence: Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg, Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Austria.Notes1 Lower thresholds apply in the areas of justice and home affairs.2 The different timeframes are the result of the fact that, for organizational reasons, conducting the interviews in the Tweede Kamer was possible only a year later than in the Nationalrat.3 See http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tsdec450&plugin=1 (accessed 11 February 2016).4 See: http://www.parlament.gv.at/SUCH/?advanced=true&simple=false&mode=pdadvanced.5 Technically, the two clerks were already hired in 2006 to allow administration to cope with the increased workload during Austria's Presidency of the European Union that year. However, while on former occasions clerks for that purpose were hired only for the duration of Presidency, this time they were hired on a permanent basis, anticipating that they would be needed anyway for new tasks commencing some years later (IntAT07).6 Notably, the EWS's effect on parliamentary scrutiny was much greater in the Nationalrat, which has submitted far fewer reasoned opinions than the Tweede Kamer so far.