Administrating EU Affairs in the Luxembourgish Parliament

The Luxembourgish parliament’s administration is not the largest one. Despite its scarce human resources, the smallest national parliament in the EU ranges among the more active assemblies in subsidiarity control. How much of this result is due to the re-organisation and administration of EU affairs rather than the political engagement of elected decision makers? This paper evaluates the role of Luxembourgish parliamentary administrators in EU affairs using the principal-agent approach. In order to assess the value of EU affairs for parliamentary administrators, I compare staff concerned with EU scrutiny individually and in their department, to their colleagues not exclusively concerned with EU affairs. Which forms of control is foreseen in their work, and which possibilities do they gain from discretion and information asymmetry? I base my findings on interviews and an analysis of the rules of procedures of the parliament concerning EU affairs. I argue that much of the provisions concerning EU affairs are beneficial for staff rather than elected members of parliament, at least of the governing parties. Information claims for instance are of high importance for the parliamentary administration, while members of parliament maintain an additional information channel, i.e. their respective party affiliation. The conclusions that may be drawn after this assessment are that the EU affairs department has more discretion than other departments, while there are only a few possibilities of control. The relative number of parliamentary staff concerned with EU affairs is large, compared to other issue areas and their staff’s scope of competences exceeds those of other staff. European integration serves them as opportunity to increase their stance within the parliamentary organisation. Information asymmetries between staff and members of parliament remain however as they were, and in favour of the elected decision makers.