National Parliaments and Political Representation in the EU: Lessons from the Eurozone Crisis

The political response to the Eurozone crisis is generally seen to have empowered executive and technocratic institutions, and marginalized both the European Parliament and national legislatures. The paper argues that the effect of the crisis for national parliaments is better described as a change of their representative role instead of a simple decline in their influence. To make this point, the involvement of parliaments is discussed in relation to three models of political community in Europe. First, the oldest form of parliamentary involvement is based on an intergovernmental conception of the European Union, focusing on scrutiny of domestic executives. Second, national parliaments have become involved in supranational decision-making processes, primarily through contacts with EU institutions, transnational networks and the subsidiarity mechanism. These two levels of involvement are primarily government-related and have been put under pressure through a more prominent role of executive actors during the Eurozone crisis. On a third level, however, the Eurozone crisis has established new incentives for a more active citizen-related involvement of national parliaments. From the perspective of demoi-cracy, national parliaments are involved in European integration through the pluralistic representation of political interests, public communication and the legitimization of competence transfers through authorization votes. Based on empirical insights from three contrasting cases of national parliaments outside and within the Eurozone – the French Assemblee Nationale, the German Bundestag, and British House of Commons –, the chapter argues that the Eurozone crisis has increased the relevance and the legitimizing potential of this demoi-cratic function of national parliaments.