The EWS as an instrument of multi-level democracy according to the European Commission´s replies to the individual ROs

The Early Warning System (EWS), which was introduced through the Treaty of Lisbon to grant national parliaments the right to scrutinize EU law-making on subsidiarity grounds, has received criticism for being ineffective to prevent an infringement of the principle of subsidiarity, burdensome for the national parliaments, and old-fashioned considering the empowerment of the European Parliament as co-legislator with the Council, among other reasons. From the side of the thirty-nine chambers that make up the twenty-seven national parliaments of the EU, there are huge variation both in their outputs delivered in the framework of the EWS and their interpretations of this subsidiarity mechanism. Besides, in practice, the EWS has strengthened the European Commission in the EU legislative procedures since 2010 as well. But how does the Commission understand the principle of subsidiarity in the framework of the EWS? To capture its rationale, this research dives into the replies given by the Commission to the individual reasoned opinions (ROs) issued by the national chambers. The results clarify that, from the Commission´s viewpoint, the EWS is an instrument of multi-level democracy that this institution uses to promote a two-fold objective: improving EU law-making, on the one hand, and balancing national diversity with supranational integration to enhance the democratic legitimacy of EU laws, on the other. However, the increasing importance of the agreements between the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission on the EU legislative agenda for the five-year institutional cycle, among other political explanations, may be making the EWS obsolete also according to this logic and not just the early one that perceives the national parliaments as collective subsidiarity watchdogs.