Parliamentary Democracy and the Euro-Crisis: Between Multi-Level Parliamentarism and Reciprocal Multi-Level Ignorance

The Lisbon Treaty was celebrated as a treaty of the parliaments. Its consequences seemed to culminate in at least partially parliamentary resurrection within the multilevel parliamentary system of the EU. However this alleged strengthening of parliaments is more than debatable. Given the EU’s legal and institutional structure, both the national parliaments and the European Parliament (EP) always were and still are in a weak position to fully participate in the governance of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The Eurozone crisis did not alter this situation. Instead, the European Council, the Eurogroup and related sub-groups gained many new discretionary powers without being bound by any kind of uniform, coordinated or reliable control mechanism of the European Parliament, national parliaments or interparliamentary network. Overall, the paper argues that the parliamentary dimension of the EU’s democracy deficit has been intensified. It explores ways to bring parliaments back into the reformed EMU governance framework and explores related, alternative means for democratizinig the EU.