’Bringing Europe into Question’ – A Comparative Study of Domestic Legislators’ Questioning Behaviour in EU Affairs

Formal parliamentary rules and recent findings on parliamentary oversight institutions suggest that many EU member state legislators have a big say in EU affairs and have the ability to scrutinize their government extensively. However, when it comes to actual control behaviour within the plenary our knowledge is still very limited. By making use of a unique data collection of parliamentary questions from the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), which covers thousands of oral and written questions for several member states over several decades, this paper provides new evidence on parliamentary involvement in EU affairs. First, it cross-nationally and longitudinally examines the extent to which legislators have employed parliamentary questions in order to control their government in EU affairs. The study considers member state parliaments that vary in terms of their year of accession, political system and questioning rules, including among others Belgium, Denmark, Spain and the UK. Second, it sheds light on the factors that account for variation between member state parliaments. For example, the literature suggests that some parties have stronger incentives than others to politicise European Union issues as well as to publicly control the executive in EU affairs. This does not only refer to the majority-opposition cleavage, but also to conflicts between Europhile and Eurosceptic parties. The paper therefore considers whether and how differences in the partisan composition of national parliaments impact on the overall control performance of legislatures. Third, it analyses developments in parliamentary behaviour alongside of institutional adaption in EU affairs and contributes to the lively discussion about the interrelationship between formal rules and actual behaviour of domestic legislatures in EU affairs.