ABSTRACT
The process of European integration has imposed particular strains and constraints on Parliament in Italy, which were evident even before 1987 but which were exacerbated by the demands of the Single Market project. The pace and extent of institutional change in the late 1980s reinforced existing problems, and in particular greatly increased the difficulties faced by Parliament in adopting the large numbers of directives. These difficulties were part of a wider and more strategic failure, namely the failure of Government and of the political elites to respond to the accelerated economic integration from 1987 onwards. The increased delays and inadequacies of parliamentary procedure were merely one symptom of this, and not new, though certainly more severe than had previously been felt. That they were not new is a commonplace. One commentator has gone so far as to describe the relationship between Parliament and the European Community before 1987 as 'pathological'.' For the preceding three decades Parliament did not adopt special procedures for considering European Community business, and adopted a variety of means of ordinary legislation, apparently indiscriminately, for the transposition of EC norms. This included even for a period using decree-laws, an emergency procedure, to transpose EC regulations which should in the event have had a direct effect without the need for transposition in this way.
