Regional Parliaments and European Affairs: The Role of Administrative Support

The introduction of the Early Warning System in the Lisbon Treaty has not only strengthened the role of national parliaments. It has also refueled the debate about the involvement of regional parliaments of legislative regions. As in the case of national parliaments, the question is to what extent the strengthening of regional parliaments requires an increase in administrative capacity and a greater role for parliamentary administrations. The first part of the paper reviews the traditional forms of engagement with European Union policy-making (networks of regional parliaments, control of the regional executive, a Brussels office) and the new opportunities for regional parliaments after the Treaty of Lisbon, especially as part of the subsidiarity checks. The second part of the paper discusses to what extent the new opportunities create pressures for increased administrative involvement and administrative adaptation and develops a set of hypotheses. The third section provides an empirical analysis of the reaction of regional parliaments to the Treaty of Lisbon. This section focuses on a comparison of regional parliaments from Germany, Austria, Belgium and the UK. The final section then discusses the link between administrative resources, staff roles and effective parliamentary engagement post-Lisbon, arguing that increased parliamentary involvement requires a certain degree of bureaucratization of parliamentary business.