Parliamentary Oversight of European Security and Defence Policy: A Matter of Formal Competences or the Will of Parliamentarians?

Are parliaments with strong formal powers for the deployment of troops likely to conduct more intensive oversight than their counterparts with weak or no powers? The literature suggests that strong formal powers delineate boundaries of parliamentary oversight. However, this article demonstrates that strong formal powers are not necessary for parliaments in order to conduct oversight. If parliaments with weak formal powers had strong incentives to carry out oversight of the EU NAVFOR Operation Atalanta, they did so by means of weakly-regulated forms of oversight. The article demonstrates that oversight beyond mandatory procedures coincides with domestic politicisation of Operation Atalanta (national framing). However, if European or international frames were dominant, parliaments were more likely to limit their oversight to mandatory procedures. Cases selected for the analysis, namely Germany, UK, France, Spain and Luxembourg, vary on the two explanatory factors (strength of formal powers and domestic politicisation of the Operation)

Approaches in biotechnological applications of natural polymers

Natural polymers, such as gums and mucilage, are biocompatible, cheap, easily available and non-toxic materials of native origin. These polymers are increasingly preferred over synthetic materials for industrial applications due to their intrinsic properties, as well as they are considered alternative sources of raw materials since they present characteristics of sustainability, biodegradability and biosafety. As definition, gums and mucilages are polysaccharides or complex carbohydrates consisting of one or more monosaccharides or their derivatives linked in bewildering variety of linkages and structures. Natural gums are considered polysaccharides naturally occurring in varieties of plant seeds and exudates, tree or shrub exudates, seaweed extracts, fungi, bacteria, and animal sources. Water-soluble gums, also known as hydrocolloids, are considered exudates and are pathological products; therefore, they do not form a part of cell wall. On the other hand, mucilages are part of cell and physiological products. It is important to highlight that gums represent the largest amounts of polymer materials derived from plants. Gums have enormously large and broad applications in both food and non-food industries, being commonly used as thickening, binding, emulsifying, suspending, stabilizing agents and matrices for drug release in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. In the food industry, their gelling properties and the ability to mold edible films and coatings are extensively studied. The use of gums depends on the intrinsic properties that they provide, often at costs below those of synthetic polymers. For upgrading the value of gums, they are being processed into various forms, including the most recent nanomaterials, for various biotechnological applications. Thus, the main natural polymers including galactomannans, cellulose, chitin, agar, carrageenan, alginate, cashew gum, pectin and starch, in addition to the current researches about them are reviewed in this article.. }To the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfíico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for fellowships (LCBBC and MGCC) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nvíel Superior (CAPES) (PBSA). This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit, the Project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462) and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) (JAT)

European Semester Compliance and National Political Party Ownership

This chapter examines the factors that account for political parties’ willingness, or lack thereof, to comply with the European Semester. Using Germany, Austria, Ireland, and France as case studies, it investigates how parliamentary parties of these four Member States accommodate conflicting pressures from the European Commission and national constituencies and industries within the 2014 and 2015 cycles of the European Semester. It shows that the concept of ownership of the European Semester by national political parties is not particularly helpful in identifying the mechanisms that determine their willingness to comply with the European Semester. Compliance does not depend on their intrinsic commitment to EU economic coordination, but rather on a variety of external, formal, and institutional factors that limit their decisions. Namely, strong formal powers in European and budgetary matters constitute an incentive for non-compliance. This means that national parliamentary parties are less likely to comply with the European Semester when they enjoy strong formal powers. Compliance within the European Semester also becomes problematic when there is no coherence between country-specific recommendations and the economic preferences of a political party. Conflict over such compliance has therefore been structured along the ideological dimension (left–right conflict rather than that of political power (government–opposition conflict)

Empowered or Disempowered? The Role of National Parliaments during the Reform of European Economic Governance

This paper investigates how the intergovernmental reform process of European economic governance affected national parliaments’ oversight of this policy area. Which parliaments became disempowered and which managed to secure their formal powers – and why? The dependent variable of the study is operationalized as the presence or absence of “emergency legislation” allowing governments to accelerate the legislative process and minimize the risk of a default by constraining national parliaments’ powers. The paper examines how national parliaments in all eurozone states were involved in approving the following measures: the EFSF (establishment and increase of budgetary capacity), the ESM, and the Fiscal Compact. The findings demonstrate that whereas northern European parliaments’ powers were secured (or in some cases even fostered), southern European parliaments were disempowered due to the following factors: (i) domestic constitutional set-up permitting emergency legislation, (ii) national supreme or constitutional courts’ consent to extensive application of emergency legislation, and (iii) international economic and political pressure on governments to prevent default of the legislative process. Due to significant power asymmetries, national parliaments remained de jure but not de facto equal in the exercise of their control powers at the EU level. As a consequence, both the disempowerment of particular parliaments and the asymmetry of powers among them has had a negative effect on the legitimacy of European economic governance.Das Discussion Paper untersucht, wie sich der zwischenstaatliche Prozess zur Reform der wirtschaftspolitischen Steuerung in der Europäischen Union auf die Aufsichtskompetenzen der nationalen Parlamente über diesen Politikbereich ausgewirkt hat. Welche Parlamente wurden entmachtet und welchen gelang es, ihre formellen Kompetenzen zu wahren – und warum? Bei dieser Untersuchung wird die abhängige Variable als das Vorhandensein oder Fehlen einer Möglichkeit zur „Notstandsgesetzgebung“ operationalisiert, die es Regierungen erlaubt, das Gesetzgebungsverfahren zu beschleunigen und das Risiko des Scheiterns eines Gesetzentwurfs zu minimieren, indem sie die Kompetenzen der nationalen Parlamente einschränkt. Dieser Beitrag analysiert, wie die nationalen Parlamente aller Staaten des Euroraums eingebunden waren, um folgende Maßnahmen zu genehmigen: die Europäische Finanzstabilisierungsfazilität EFSF (Einrichtung und Aufstockung), den Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus ESM und den Europäischen Fiskalpakt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Kompetenzen der Parlamente im nördlichen Europa gewahrt (und in einigen Fällen sogar gestärkt) wurden, wohingegen die Parlamente Südeuropas aufgrund der folgenden Faktoren entmachtet wurden: (i) nationale Verfassungsordnung, die eine Notstandsgesetzgebung erlaubt, (ii) nationale oberste Gerichte oder Verfassungsgerichte, die der extensiven Anwendung einer Notstandsgesetzgebung zustimmen, und (iii) internationaler wirtschaftlicher und politischer Druck auf Regierungen, um ein Scheitern eines Gesetzentwurfs im Gesetzgebungsverfahren zu vermeiden. Die nationalen Parlamente blieben bei der Ausübung ihrer Kontrollkompetenzen auf EU-Ebene zwar formalrechtlich einander gleichgestellt, faktisch waren sie es aufgrund erheblicher Machtasymmetrien jedoch nicht. Somit hatte sowohl die Entmachtung einzelner Parlamente als auch die Asymmetrie der Kompetenzen zwischen Parlamenten einen negativen Effekt auf die Legitimität der wirtschaftspolitischen Steuerung in der Europäischen Union.1 Introduction 2 The database 3 The role of parliamentary oversight in European policy-making 4 Emergency legislation: Conceptualization 5 Application of emergency legislation during the European financial crisis: Empirical evidence 7 What factors influenced the application of emergency legislation during the reform of European economic governance? 8 Conclusions Appendix Reference

Effectiveness of the European Semester: Explaining Domestic Consent and Contestation

Do parliamentary parties politicize compliance within the European Semester? If so, which conflict lines organize parliamentary debates? In order to address these questions, this discussion paper analyses national parliamentary participation in two budgetary cycles of the European Semester (2014 and 2015) in Austria, France, Germany, and Ireland. While in France and Germany, compliance within the European Semester has been subject to strong politicization, this has not been the case in Austria and Ireland. Moreover, strong politicization coincided with the contestation of country-specific recommendations among the parliamentary parties. The empirical analysis established that strong formal powers in budgetary matters constitute an important prerequisite allowing parliamentary parties to articulate their contestation. However, the willingness to comply depends most directly on whether the content of country-specific recommendations is coherent with the economic preferences of a political party, not the government–opposition cleavage.Wird compliance im Rahmen des Europäischen Semesters durch nationale Parteien politisiert? Falls ja, entlang welcher Konfliktlinien orientieren sich parlamentarische Debatten? Um diese Fragen anzugehen, analysiert dieser Artikel die Beteiligung nationaler Parlamente in zwei Budgetzyklen des Europäischen Semesters (2014 und 2015) in Österreich, Deutschland, Frankreich und Irland. Während in Deutschland und Frankreich compliance im Rahmen des Europäischen Semesters verstärkt Gegenstand von Politisierung war, trifft dies in Irland und Österreich nicht zu. Darüber hinaus wurden in den Fällen mit starker Politisierung verstärkt auch Anfechtungen der länderspezifischen Empfehlungen durch die parlamentarischen Parteien festgestellt. Die empirische Analyse zeigt, dass starke formale Befugnisse in Budgetangelegenheiten eine wichtige Voraussetzung für Parlamente darstellen, länderspezifische Empfehlungen anzufechten. Allerdings hängt die Bereitschaft, den länderspezifischen Empfehlungen zu folgen, in großem Ausmaß davon ab, ob diese inhaltlich mit der zugrunde liegenden ökonomischen Haltung der Partei übereinstimmt und nicht von der Kluft zwischen Regierung und Opposition.1 Introduction 2 What factors account for consent or contestation of EU policy guidance? 3 Research design 4 Empirical findings EU policy guidance in Ireland and Austria: Explaining domestic consent Explaining domestic contestation of EU policy guidance in Germany and France 5 Discussion Reference

Parliaments and the Economic Governance of the European Union: Talking Shops or Deliberative Bodies?

This book examines the legislative, representative, and control functions of national parliaments and parliamentary parties during the reform of European economic governance. The empirical analysis focuses on domestic approvals of anti-crisis measures (EFSF, ESM and the Fiscal Compact) in all member states of the Eurozone, and the extent to which parliaments and parties secured their competences in EU policy-making during that process. In order to address this question, Maatsch employs an interdisciplinary approach and analyses (i) in which state parliaments’ formal powers in approval of anti-crisis measures were constrained, (ii) how parliamentary parties voted on the analysed measures, (iii) the dominant discourses of their proponents and opponents and (iv) which parties advocated neoliberal and which Keynesian measures. This book will appeal to advanced students and scholars of European integration, Europeanisation, and European governance, as well as policy advisers or researchers, working on the EMU, or the financial crises in particular

Drivers of Political Parties' Voting Behaviour in European Economic Governance: The Ultimate Decline of the Economic Cleavage?

The article examines the factors that determined the attitude of parliamentary parties towards eurozone anti-crisis measures. Using a statistical logit model, it demonstrates that, while all governing parties supported such measures, opposition parties were divided. The support of the former is explicable in terms of international obligations. The positions of opposition parties reflected their attitude towards European integration: Eurosceptic parties tended to oppose anti-crisis measures. Furthermore, whereas negative votes were less likely in countries marked by higher levels of popular trust in government and satisfaction with the problem-solving capacity of the EU, the likelihood of no votes increased as a function of the level of trust in national parliaments. The policy preferences of opposition parties, measured on the economic left–right scale, did not provide significant explanatory potential; nor did an additional test measuring the impact of extreme left‒right positions

Erosion of Parliamentary Democracy During the European Financial Crisis

What were the effects of the recent European economic crisis on parliamentary democracy in the European Union? Were national parliaments negatively affected? In the aftermath of the crisis these questions generated a very lively academic discussion. In her forthcoming book, PADEMIA member Aleksandra Maatsch makes a significant contribution to that debate by analysing how national parliaments and parliamentary parties performed their legislative, representative, and control functions during the reform of European economic governance. The findings demonstrate that formal powers of national parliaments are limited while the international responsibility among governing parties is prioritised. Nevertheless, parliaments have not become mere ‘talking shops’ either