National and Regional Parliaments in the EU decision-making process, after the Treaty of Lisbon and the Euro-crisis

The Treaty of Lisbon increased the role of National and Regional Parliaments in the EU decision-making process, in order to compensate for some of the weaknesses of the European institutional architecture. Neither National nor Regional Parliaments are given a real power of veto. However, their active involvement – through the day-to-day activity of direction and scrutiny of their executives and sometimes through the triggering of the “early warning mechanism” – can significantly help in closing the gap between (mainly national) politics and (mainly European) policies and in letting national public opinions have a say in the decisions being taken “in Brussels”. Their active involvement seems even more necessary after the Euro-crisis, which has brought about a steady acceleration of both the trends towards a more inter-governmental EU and the development of an “asymmetric” Europe. Under the light of these trends, in fact, a further increase of the scrutiny function of the European Parliament seems an unrealistic scenario and, in any case, not sufficient in order to oversight and to counterbalance the fragmented (and, thus, very powerful) executive power of the EU.