EU Parliamentary Scrutiny at Times of Crisis: Losing Ground or Adopting New Influence Strategies?

The main aim of this paper is to map out the strategies of parliamentary parties in the process of adopting and implementing the European Semester. It considers two diverse parliamentary settings: the Danish Folketing with a strong institutionalization of EU affairs, and the Spanish Cortes Generales with a formally weaker EU scrutiny system. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, it presents a theoretical framework for assessing the behavior of political actors in a situation of economic crisis inspired by Mark Blyth’s notion of uncertainty. In an environment of high uncertainty, ideas and interests are less clearly defined and political actors are expected to be more prone to adopting alternative strategies that go beyond the national level. Secondly, it contributes empirically to the concept of a ‘multi-level parliamentary field’ by considering the multi-level strategies of parliamentary parties at both the national and European level within a specific policy field. This implies assessing a broad range of parliamentary activities ranging from formal opportunities of mandating the national government or issuing reasoned opinions to EU institutions to more informal activities of networking with MEPs and uploading policy preferences to European level actors. Finally, the paper feeds into to the ongoing debate about the participation of national parliamentary actors in EU crisis management by evaluating their ability to compensate for the diminishing role in economic policy by adapting behaviors and strategies to new circumstances.