Democracy and the Power of the Purse: The Implications of the Evolution of the European Parliament's Budgetary Powers for Democracy in the EU

The attempts to guarantee consent to taxation left significant landmarks in the evolution of parliament in medieval England and later in the configuration of today’s parliaments. After the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights ensured that the consent of the parliament is a must for taxation by the Crown. The power of the British parliament in financial matters expanded over centuries with the complete control of annual budget. However, representation became an issue as the parliament consisted of an unelected body, the House of Lords. Thus, the elimination of the veto power of the House of Lords in the 20^thcentury made the popularly elected House of Commons the sole authority on the budgetary issues. Thus, budgetary powers as one of the traditional competencies of parliament have been intrinsically related to democratization.

The European Parliament(EP) also began its institutional life with limited powers over financial matters, and later extended its control over the budgetary content, and finally, increased its powers with the elimination of unelected institutions from the final decision-making on the budgetary matters. Although the granted budgetary powers aimed at alleviating the so-called “democratic-deficit” in the EU, a competence that is intrinsically related to "representation" had been granted to the EP even before the introduction of direct representation to the EP in 1979. This paper aims to process-trace the complex historical relationship between the EP’s increasing budgetary powers and its levels of ‘democratic representativeness’ by questioning the sequence of events in its democratization process and by applying a historical-institutionalist approach.