Dissertation thesis "Relationship between National Parliaments and the European Union" examines the impacts of the European integration on the national parliaments - the limitation of their functions and powers, measures undertaken to compensate these limitation in both the EU and the national law and the new roles of national parliaments in the context of European integration. The point of departure of the thesis is the notion of representative democracy as a still unsurpassed concept of a legitimate exercise of public authority. National parliaments mainly fulfil the controlling and legitimising function in the EU affairs. To this end, they have various legal instruments at their disposal. The fulfilment of these functions is limited by political and legal factors stemming from the nature of parliaments as political, not professional bodies and from their role in the national constitutional systems. Special attention is paid to the role of national parliaments in the evolving economic and monetary union. The general findings are confronted with the legal regulation and practice in the Parliament of the Czech Republic.

La thèse compare l’Assemblée nationale et le Bundestag en ce qui concerne l’évolution dans le temps des pratiques des affaires européennes qu’ont les députés, et de leurs discours sur le rôle des parlements dans l’UE. Elle met en lumière une évolution paradoxale : A mesure que les députés se saisissent de l’Europe, les pratiques parlementaires nationales imprègnent de plus en plus leurs discours sur la démocratie parlementaire dans l’UE. L’analyse se fait à travers une « description dense » (« thick description») fondée sur des documents, de la littérature secondaire et des entretiens avec des acteurs parlementaires, en activité aujourd’hui ou dans le passé. Les débats parlementaires sont analysés à l’aide d’une méthode qualitative-quantitative qui compare les clivages des discours dans le temps. La thèse soutient l’argument selon lequel les néo-institutionnalismes, qui prévalent actuellement dans les études européennes, ne suffisent pas pour comprendre les processus d'institutionnalisation, qui ont lieu dans les parlements nationaux, parallèlement à l'évolution de la législation européenne. En intégrant des éléments de la « practice theory », du social-constructivisme de Peter Berger et Thomas Luckmann et de l’« ancien » institutionnalisme de Max Weber, on peut comprendre les observations comme le fruit d’un changement des « motifs d’action » discursive des acteurs. A mesure que leur expérience de l’UE s’accroit, les députés évaluent la démocratie européenne de moins en moins sur la base de réflexions a priori sur le futur de l’intégration européenne, mais en fonction des pratiques qu’ils expérimentent tous les jours. / The thesis compares EU practice and discourse on the role of parliaments in the EU across time, in the Assemblée nationale and the Bundestag. The thesis brings to light the presence of a European Integration Paradox: Members of Parliaments’ rising experience in EU participation has led to an increasing importance of domestic roles for MPs’ ‘word and deed’ in EU affairs. EU practice is analysed through ‘thick description,’ which is based on primary and secondary interview evidence with current and historical parliamentary actors as well as the study of documents and secondary literature. Assessments of discourse on the role of parliaments are conducted through a systematic deductive-inductive analysis of debates on selected EU treaty changes. This thesis argues that neo-institutionalisms currently prevalent in EU studies are inadequate for understanding the institutionalisation processes at work in national parliaments with increasing EU legislation. Integrating elements of practice theory, of the social-constructivists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann and the ‘old’ institutionalism of Max Weber, the observations can be interpreted as change of ‘motives’ of discursive action of the actors. With rising experience of ‘doing EU’, Members of Parliament evaluate the role of parliaments in the EU less on the basis of a priori considerations but depending of their day-to-day parliamentary practice.

The long-spun Brexit process has been named a symbol of an alleged disconnection between the European Union’s high-level decision-makers and its citizens. This thesis aims to contribute to the existing literature on the role of national parliaments in brining EU affairs closer to the citizens. More specifically, it turns attention to the Riksdag, and to how informative parliamentary debates on EU affairs are communicated to Swedish citizens. Earlier studies have provided valuable insights into how political opinions on EU affairs are presented in electoral manifestoes and behind closed doors in the Riksdag’s committees. By conducting a quantitative content analysis on Swedish news medias’ coverage of the Riksdag’s debate on EU-affairs over the last ten years, this study offers a first insight into how EU debates are conveyed to the wider Swedish audience. Drawing on previous research on national parliaments, the concept of opposition and theories from the field of political communication, three hypotheses are formulated. While the first hypothesis aims to test whether Swedish news media provide citizens a diverse set of positions from the Riksdag’s debate on EU affairs, the second hypothesis seeks to illuminate which parliamentary actors that are most prominent in medias’ reporting from the Riksdag. Finally, the third hypothesis turns attention to the mode in which EU affairs are presented in news media. None of the hypotheses are unambiguously supported by evidence. The implications are that the media to some extent filter the parliamentary debate. A filter that at occasions may exclude diverging positions on EU affairs. Further, though governments are presented as the main actor in the majority of all analysed articles, the Riksdag is close behind. The result implies that the Riksdag is indeed competing with the government in being the main agenda setter in Swedish news media. Nevertheless, it also suggests that oftentimes, the Riksdag is referred to as one unit, without news media distinguishing the diverging positions within the institution. Finally, the finding from the third hypothesis suggests that the Riksdag is somewhat restricted when it comes to shaping the discourse surrounding EU affairs. In spite of the Riksdag’s increased focus on policy-aspects of EU affairs, the mediated image of the very same debate may still be presented as a concern of polity or procedure. Ultimately, despite not providing any clear support for the hypotheses, the somewhat filtered mediated image of the Riksdag’s debate on EU affairs may carry implications for national parliaments’ ability to bring EU affairs closer to the citizens of the Union.

Application of the Lisbon Treaty provisions on involvement of national parliaments in the EU decision-making process 10 years later Abstract Adoption of the Lisbon Treaty has brought about several essential institutional changes in the functioning of the European Union. For example, a further shift towards co-decision by the European Parliament on secondary law that became ordinary legislative procedure. Also, qualified majority voting in the Council has been extended and subjected to the new conditions. Last but not least, the EU competences have been divided as exclusive, shared and supporting. These and related further steps simultaneously gave rise to a more intense involvement of national parliaments, both in the sense of a scrutiny over a due exercise of conferred powers as well as a democratic safeguard of the new processes. The main goal of this thesis is to present a comprehensive picture of existing legal framework in this field, including a brief summary on crucial historical factors that have been shaping it until its current form. Hand in hand with that, it also offers evaluation of the most frequently used mechanisms throughout the 10 years of its application. Consequently, it leads to a reflection on how, and if at all, effectively exploit the potential of national parliaments in this regard,...

National parliaments (NPs) are vital to the European Union’s (EU’s) democratic legitimacy. They are tasked with controlling their governments through oversight and scrutiny while providing a deliberative forum by offering policy alternatives, informing, and connecting citizens to the EU. NPs can only provide public accountability if they adequately meet these challenges, ensuring a well-informed citizenry that is able to form and vote according to their preferences on European integration. To do this, Members of Parliament (MPs) need to publicly communicate EU issues and important developments concerning the EU project. Yet, the use of the communicative function of NPs in EU affairs remains underexplored and questions of public accountability unanswered. Against this background, this study aims to shed light on the general salience of the EU in the plenary by adopting a principal-agent framework to analyze the factors that co-vary with the willingness of MPs to discuss the EU. Employing regression analysis on a novel dataset with observations from 17 European NPsincluding over 20,000 plenary protocols from 2006-2019, this study notes a general upwards trend of the emphasis MPs put on the EU over time, driven by critical junctures, most notably, the Lisbon treaty and the Eurozone crisis. The results of this study also indicate that MPs are most consistently responsive to elections and other key EU events. Besides, factors related to authority transfers and EU legislation as well as strategic party incentives determine how much MPs use their communicative function in the plenary. Nevertheless, this study unveils some challenges to the democratic legitimacy of the EU.

The debate regarding a national parliaments’ opposition in EU politics is ambiguous andremarkably underdeveloped. Historically researchers argued that opposition in the context of national parliaments and European integration is decreasing at the national level. However, this idea has been challenged during the last few years by a few researchers when studying opposition in EU Member States and specifically Sweden. Even though the idea of a decreasing opposition at the national level has been challenged, researchers have primarily focused their studies on measuring opposition through quantitative approaches. Consequently, there is a shortage of research examining opposition through a qualitative lens which could grant there search field a more nuanced perspective of the opposition occurring in national parliaments.The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if and how opposition takes place in the Swedish European Affairs Committee [EAC], through a theoretical lens of opposition and parliamentary transformations. The thesis offers a comprehensive qualitative analysis of opposition by usinga reflexive thematic analysis. The results show that opposition exist in the Swedish EAC. However, political parties repeatedly fail to present alternatives to EU proposals and fail to debate suggestions stemming from the EU. This thesis shed light of how domestic opposition in EU politics can be studied through a qualitative lens and provides a more nuanced depictionof opposition.

This essay studies the national parliaments' reasoned opinions at the early warning mechanism. The study aim to declare if there is any variation in which national parliaments who is active in the early warning mechanism, and if there is a variation in type of bills in the early warning mechanism. These study also wants to describe some variation in how the national parliaments argued in the reasoned opinions. The study gives an enhanced understanding of the importance and legitimacy of the early warning mechanism and the reasoned opinions. The result shows that there is a certain group of parliaments who are more active and these are with few exceptions EU 15 countries. The study also shows that there is some kind of bills that is more prevalent than others, there is however some variation. There is also a wide variation in the arguments raised in the reasoned opinions. The results indicate that the national parliaments varies greatly in managing the reasoned opinions and it gives a negatively impacton the early warning mechanism. / Studien granskar de nationella parlamentens motiverade yttranden inom ramen för EU:s subsidiaritetsgranskning. Studiens syfte är att beskriva en möjlig variation angående  vilka nationella parlamenten som är aktiva inom subsidiaritetsgranskningen. Studiens syfte är även att beskriva variationen i vilka lagförslag som återfinns i subsidiaritetsgrankningen, samt om de nationella parlamenten varierar i  argumentering i de motiverade yttrandena. Studien visar att det finns nationella parlament som är vanligare förekommande inom granskningen, samt att vissa typer av lagförslag föranleder fler yttranden än andra. Beträffande argumenteringen i de motiverade yttrandena fanns en stor variation.

Cette thèse explique la participation des parlements nationaux à l’élaboration et au contrôle des politiques européennes de justice et de sécurité intérieure. Le décalage que l’on observe entre les prérogatives formelles des parlements nationaux et la réalité de leur participation à l’élaboration des politiques européennes de justice et de sécurité intérieure nous conduit à adopter une grille de lecture fondée sur le cadre juridique, sur sa concrétisation et sur son interprétation par les acteurs parlementaires. La participation parlementaire est étudiée à l’aide d’une comparaison en deux temps. En premier lieu, les déterminants de l’activité parlementaire sont spécifiés à l’aide d’une comparaison quantitative de l’ensemble des parlements nationaux européens pour la période 2010-2012. La portée de ces déterminants est saisie, en second lieu, par une étude de l’examen parlementaire de trois enjeux de justice et de sécurité intérieure — la Convention d’application de l’accord de Schengen, les négociations pour les Accords Passenger Name Record (PNR) avec les États-Unis et la réforme de la gouvernance de Schengen — dans trois systèmes de gouvernement parlementaire majoritaire différents — la France, l’Italie et la Grande-Bretagne. La comparaison des cas contrastés a confirmé que, malgré les spécificités organiques et fonctionnelles nationales, le contrôle parlementaire des actes européens de justice et de sécurité intérieure revêt, dans les systèmes de gouvernement parlementaire majoritaire, des formes similaires. La participation des parlements nationaux à l’élaboration et au contrôle des politiques européennes de justice et de sécurité intérieure s’explique par un dosage variable de règles formelles relatives au contrôle parlementaire des politiques européens de justice et de sécurité intérieure, d’une part, et par les volontés des parlementaires à en faire usage, d’autre part. / Since the end of the 1980s, the traditional role of national legislatures regarding internal security and the protection of fundamental rights has been questioned by the progressive enforcement of the European Union’s legislative power. This thesis explains how national parliaments contribute to the decision-making process and to the scrutiny of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). The gap between the formal scrutiny prerogatives of national parliaments and the reality of their participation in the AFSJ decision-making process leads us to adopt an approach based on the legal framework, its concretization and its interpretation by the parliamentary actors. The involvement of national parliaments in the AFSJ is examined using a two-step comparison. First, the determinants that contribute to the variation of parliamentary activity in the AFSJ are specified through a quantitative analysis of all 27 European national parliaments for the period 2010-2012. Second, the scope of each determinant is assessed though a study of the parliamentary scrutiny of three AFSJ issues – the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement, the negotiations of the Passenger Name Record Agreement with the United States and the Schengen governance reform- in three different majoritarian parliamentary systems - France, Italy and Great Britain. The most different systems design has confirmed that, despite institutional and functional national specificities, the parliamentary scrutiny of AFSJ takes on similar forms in majoritarian parliamentary systems of government. A mix of formal scrutiny prerogatives and MPs incentives explain the involvement of national parliaments in the AFSJ.

La dimension parlementaire de l’action extérieure de l’Union européenne, entendue comme la place occupée par le Parlement européen et par les parlements nationaux des Etats membres en tant qu’acteurs de l’action extérieure, se déploie à deux niveaux. Elle s’exprime tout d’abord, au sein de l’Union, à travers l’exercice des pouvoirs parlementaires octroyés par les traités (et le cas échéant par les droits constitutionnels nationaux), et ce de façon incontestable. Elle s’exprime ensuite sur la scène internationale au travers de multiples actions de diplomatie parlementaire, en l’absence de cadre juridique érigé par les traités, et ce de façon ambiguë. Dans l’un comme dans l’autre cas, la dimension parlementaire de l’action extérieure apparaît comme un atout, mais sous conditions, pour la poursuite de l’objectif d’affirmation de l’Union sur la scène internationale. Elle est en effet, en principe, un atout pour la légitimité démocratique de l’action de l’Union et pour la cohérence matérielle de l’action extérieure. Néanmoins, dans la pratique, cet atout demande à être confirmé. Afin d’être un atout effectif, la dimension parlementaire de l’action extérieure de l’UE suppose, à cet égard, d’assurer une conciliation harmonieuse de la légitimité démocratique de l’action de l’UE avec l’affirmation de l’Union sur la scène internationale. La quête de cette conciliation conduit à la formulation de réponses – réalisées ou réalisables – qui suivent un mouvement distinct selon l’espace d’expression des parlements. Lorsque le Parlement européen et les parlements nationaux agissent au sein de l’Union, les solutions résident dans la réalisation de multiples adaptations à partir du cadre juridique et institutionnel érigé par les traités. Ces adaptations, qui restent perfectibles, expliquent que la dimension parlementaire de l’action extérieure soit aujourd’hui encore un processus en construction. Lorsque le Parlement européen et les parlements nationaux agissent sur la scène internationale, les solutions résident dans la structuration d’un cadre juridique global, les règles juridiques existantes étant pour l’heure parcellaires et incomplètes. En définitive, l’action extérieure de l’Union s’enrichit d’une dimension parlementaire qui suppose, au sein de l’Union, d’approfondir les multiples adaptations réalisées à partir du cadre juridique existant et, sur la scène internationale, de structurer un cadre juridique global pour l’heure inexistant. / The parliamentary dimension of the European Union’s External Action, to be understood as the involvement of the European Parliament and of the National Parliaments of EU Member States as actors of the External Action, is rolled out on two levels. Firstly, it is undoubtedly articulated within the European Union, through the exercise of parliamentary powers conferred by the treaties (and, where appropriate, by national constitutional Law). Secondly, it is ambiguously articulated on the international scene through various parliamentary diplomatic actions, without any legal framework set up by the treaties. In both cases, the parliamentary dimension of the External Action appears to be an asset, but under conditions, for the assertion of the European Union on the international scene. It is, in principle, an asset for the democratic legitimacy of the EU’s Action and for the coherence of the External Action. However, it needs to be confirmed in practice. In order to be a truly effective asset, the parliamentary dimension of the EU’s External Action requires reconciling the democratic legitimacy of the EU’s Action with the assertion of the European Union on the international scene. The quest for this conciliation leads to different answers – effective or desirable – which follow a particular pattern depending on the parliaments’ “area of expression”. When the European Parliament and the National Parliaments act within the EU, these answers consist of multiple adaptations of the legal and institutional framework established by the treaties. These adaptations, which are still imperfect, can explain why the parliamentary dimension of the External Action is still a process under construction. When the European Parliament and the National Parliaments act on the international scene, the solutions consist of the structuring of a comprehensive legal framework, since the existing legal rules remain piecemeal and incomplete. Eventually, the EU’s External Action is enriched by a parliamentary dimension which implies deepening, inside the EU, the multiple adaptations achieved from the existing legal framework, and which implies structuring, on the international scene, a global legal framework, which is missing for the moment.

This dissertation deals with institutional aspects of the democratic deficit of the European Union, particularly the powers of national parliaments and their capabilities to influence decision-making at the European level. The national parliaments' role in European integration became an interesting research area thanks to their greater involvement in the EU affairs in the last twenty years. However, because of the many developments of the European integration in the last twenty years (including both deepening and broadening of integration), many questions remain open. These include involvement of national parliaments both on European level and on national level; for obvious reasons, the latter has been studied less regarding the parliaments of the Member States that joined the Union in 2004 and 2007. While this dissertation deals with some aspects of the work of national parliaments of all Member States, more detailed studies are devoted to the cases of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. This dissertation poses questions in the three main areas of research that are all devoted to some practical aspects of national parliaments' involvement in European affairs. First, it examines the involvement of national parliaments at the European level and whether national parliaments do have the...