Democratic control and legitimacy in the evolving economic governance framework

This briefing aims to contribute to the debate on the review of the economic governance framework by drawing lessons from the implementation of the existing provisions, assessing the parliamentary accountability of the EU executive actors and providing specific policy recommendationson its reform. This document was provided by the Economic Governance Support Unit at the request of the ECON Committe

Investing in destabilisation: How foreign money is used to undermine democracy in the EU

Foreign interference has become a major security threat for democracies. The European Union (EU) provides no exception and, in the last few years, has significantly stepped up its efforts to counter this threat. A specific type of foreign interference is the foreign funding of political parties. At the national level, regulations banning or limiting foreign funding are currently in place in most member states, but there is still significant variation across them. At the EU level, the recent reforms of the regulation on the funding of the Europarties and their associated foundations have banned contributions from abroad. Notwithstanding such welcome changes to party regulations, cases of foreign funding are still being reported in several member states, with foreign actors exploiting regulatory loopholes to channel funds or provide other types of support. To tackle this issue more effectively, regulatory convergence at the national level should be promoted, the transparency of party accounts should be enhanced, and the monitoring and sanctioning powers of the relevant control authorities strengthened

Towards a revision of the Regulation on the statute and funding of European political parties and foundations

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, provides an in-depth analysis of the key proposed changes to Regulation 1141/2014 on the statute and funding of European political parties and foundations. It assesses the extent to which the reformed regulation strengthens, as per art. 10(4) TEU, the capacity of Europarties to contribute to forming a European political awareness and expressing the will of EU citizens

The Political Groups as Organisations: The Institutionalisation of Transnational Party Politics

The chapter investigates the process of institutionalisation of the two major political groups in the European Parliament, the Group of the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D). It argues that the organisational development of the groups has been triggered by external events, such as the introduction of direct elections, the mega-enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe and the legislative empowerment of the EP. Based on a wealth of empirical material—from documents collected in the party archives to original interviews with senior administrators of the groups—it shows that, over time, they have become both more complex and differentiated, and more autonomous from the national member parties. Yet, the latter are still in control of the selection process of members and continue to play an important, but often overlooked, role within the group organisations

Taming the European Parliament : how member states reformed economic governance in the EU

This paper aims to assess the role of the European Parliament (EP) in the recent reforms of the EU’s economic governance. It shows that, despite the post-Lisbon communitarisation of the EMU policy-making, the impact of the EP was limited. Based on original interview data and a wealth of primary and secondary sources, it reveals that the EP was only able to produce limited ‘first-order changes’ (i.e., adjustments to the details of the policy regime), whereas it had almost no influence on the goals and instruments of the EMU. The paper argues that the limited influence of the EP can be explained by the dominant role member states (still) play in the EMU. They defined the ‘policy core’ of economic and budgetary policies (in terms of sound public finances and low inflation) before the upgrade of the EP’s powers with the Lisbon treaty, and using several strategies they defended it successfully in the post-Lisbon context. The paper reviews the key policies adopted by the EU to tackle the crisis – from the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact to legislation on the Banking Union – and identifies five strategies through which the Council (often in tandem with the Commission) successfully managed to curb the influence of the EP

Legislating in the shadow of the European Council: Empowering or silencing the European Parliament?

Introduction: “As a result of this trend towards ‘summitization’, the fixation with meetings at which the Heads of State and Government, in a clear breach of the spirit of the Treaties, take more and more decisions themselves and seek to put their stamp even on the fine print of legislation, the Community institutions are increasingly being marginalized”.ii This is how the President of the European Parliament (EP) Martin Schulz recently portrayed decision-making in the European Union (EU): “a state of affairs” he added “reminescent of the era of the Congress of Vienna”. The academic literature has also captured a similar development and, especially (but not exclusively) in the field of economic and monetary policies, has described the European Council as “the political executive of the Union” (Fabbrini 2013, p. 1006) which has come to play “a superior role in relation to the Council and the Commission [...] the heads instruct the relevant Council formation and also the Commission to work towards specific objectives [...] and also to revise proposals” (Puetter 2014, p. 73). In the “new” formulation of “intergovernmentalism”, the role of supranational institutions change: rather than resisting intergovernmental coordination, they “act strategically [...] in a more hostile environment, they avoid putting forward proposals that have little chance of success” (Bickerton et al., 2014, pp. 8-9)

Assessing What Brexit Means for Europe: Implications for EU Institutions and Actors

With the signing of the EU–UK trade and cooperation agreement in December 2020, the configurations of Brexit have started to become clearer. The first consequences of the UK’s decision to leave the EU have become visible, both in the UK and in the EU. This thematic issue focuses on a relatively under-researched aspect of Brexit—what the UK withdrawal has meant and means for the EU. Using new empirical data and covering most (if not all) of the post-2016 referendum period, it provides a first overall assessment of the impact of Brexit on the main EU institutions, institutional rules and actors. The articles in the issue reveal that EU institutions and actors changed patterns of behaviour and norms well before the formal exit of the UK in January 2020. They have adopted ‘counter-measures’ to cope with the challenges of the UK withdrawal—be it new organizational practices in the Parliament, different network dynamics in the Council of the EU or the strengthening of the Franco-German partnership. In this sense, the Union has—so far—shown significant resilience in the wake of Brexit

Introduction

This paper is closed access until 16 November 2020.The Introduction presents the rationale, the research questions and the hypotheses of the Special Issue. While the European Parliament (EP) has unquestionably been one of the winners of the Lisbon Treaty, its empowerment has taken place while several crises – from the financial crisis to Brexit – hit the EU. Against this backdrop, it sets the scene for the questions that will guide the various articles of the Special Issue: to what extent has the EP effectively used the new powers conferred to it by the Lisbon Treaty? What conditions have favoured or limited its capacity to shape policies? In testing times for integration, the EP often struggles to translate its institutional powers into policy influence. The articles in this collection show that this is more likely to happen when issues are close to the sovereignty of the member states, and when decisions generate well-identifiable costs at the national level

Le elezioni politiche britanniche. Un panorama insulare?

This article seeks to uncover the factors that led Prime Minister Theresa May and the Conservative Party to lose a huge electoral margin over the Labour Party in the 2017 General Elections. Their undecisive victory produced a minority government and made the Brexit negotiations with the EU more difficult. In the first part of this article I analyse the electoral campaign of the two major parties and the salience of different issues (including, obviously, Brexit) for British public opinion. In the second part, the analytical focus moves to the Conservative and Labour voters, and the impact of electoral turnout. In the third part, I explore the «Brexit effect» on the electoral results of the Conservative and the Labour parties, observing electoral change at the level of individual constituencies. Finally, the last section speculates on the implications of the results, particularly for party and party system change