In the shadow of the treaties. National Parliaments and their evolving role in European Integration

This contribution, which concludes the special issue, provides some reflections regarding the way in which national parliaments manage and adapt to the numerous and particularly varied challenges posed by the European integration process. In particular, this work discusses two normally agreed upon assumptions about national parliaments being mainly passive institutions and appearing on the EU scene only with the Treaty of Lisbon. Subsequently, this work summarises some of the findings of the articles included in the special issues that shed new light on the many roles of national parliaments in the EU and on some of the main characteristics of their Europeanisation process. Their analyses follow different approaches, some adopting a political science methodology, others a legal approach; some focussing on a single area of policymaking, others addressing cross-sectorial topics; and some concentrating their comparative analysis on a small number of states, other on a reduced amount of years. Nevertheless, all works consider both the European and the national dimensions. Overall, the articles help to get a clearer although still incomplete overview of the effects of the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon attributing “European powers” to national parliaments, whose implementation took place while the EU was facing a series of crucial crises and deep transformations. It is argued that further research along the same path is still ahead. The research should possibly adopt the same methodology and focus on the regular institutional interaction between the EU and the national levels through the so-called “Euro-national parliamentary procedures”. In its last part, this article argues that the role of national parliaments in the future evolution of the European integration process, specifically in a more asymmetric Europe, is going to increase. However, it is far from clear through which institutional mechanism the democratic legitimacy resources of national parliaments might be used.