Considering the literature on the role of national parliaments in the EU, most scholars would probably reply to a hypothetical Eurobarometer question that European integration was rather ‘a bad thing’ for national parliaments. The process of European integration, it is generally argued, has led to a transfer of legislative power not only from the national to the European level, but, even more importantly, also from parliaments to the executives. As a consequence, democratically elected institutions at the national level are often bypassed in the decision-making process. The outbreak of the current financial and debt crisis seems to reinforce this trend: budgetary authority - a key prerogative of parliaments - is increasingly subject to influence from EU institutions both within and outside of the EU Treaty framework. To assess whether and to what extent the crises have indeed led to a further de-parliamentarisation, the paper will analyse how national parliaments have responded to the crisis.
In particular, it will analyse to what extent parliaments were able to implement effective scrutiny procedures regarding the new rescue mechanisms, whether the crisis management lead to a greater politicization of EU issues and to what extent inter-parliamentary cooperation is used to counterbalance the dominance of executives in EMU policy-making. Detailed empirical data reveals a very uneven participation of parliaments in the crisis management, both in terms of formal rights and their involvement in practice. As a result, the crisis deepens the gap between stronger and weaker parliaments, possibly leading to the dangerous development of ‘second class’ parliaments in the EU.
