ABSTRACT
European integration has been accelerating over the last decade. Legislative or
quasi-legislative competencies of the European level have grown tremen-
dously and to such a degree that the role of national parliaments in policy-
making is on the agenda. Discussions about the twofold democratic deficit
in Europe – both at the European and the national level – initiated by Fritz
Scharpf, demonstrate the relevance of the question of the future of the
nation-state’s parliamentary democracy in the member states of the European
Union.1 The internationalisation of governance is taking place worldwide. In
the year 2000 the number of international intergovernmental bodies reached
almost 1000. Of those bodies, 922 are working under the conditions of inter-
national law and international contracts.2 But only in Europe has internationa-
lisation of governance reached almost the status of a full-fledged democratic
polity. The impact on national legislation is immense. In Germany, for
example, the proportion of laws in 12 domestic policy fields induced by Euro-
pean regulations increased from 17 to 35 per cent between 1983 and 2002,3
and the number of EU submittals to the German Bundestag has increased from
13 in the legislative period 1957-61 to 2070 in the period 1990-94, amount-
ing to a proportion of 0.4 per cent of all parliamentary submittals in the early
period and 24 per cent in the more recent period.4 Recent data suggest that this
process is still going on. In the legislative period 1994-98, the number of EU/ EC submittals to the German Bundestag increased by almost 1000 to 2955.5
According to research results of Schmitter, and Hooghe and Marks, policy
competence and responsibility of the EU has been extended from about
13 per cent of all policies in the late 1960s to about 55 per cent of all policies
in 2000.6
These developments doubtless indicate a Europeanisation of nation state
politics. Europeanisation is a dazzling term,7 used with reference to all
kinds of phenomena in the course of European integration. But it covers sig-
nificant changes in different dimensions of nation state politics induced by the
impact of European politics on the national level. The numbers on induced
legislation most obviously signify a process of Europeanisation. Since legis-
lation (that is, making universal binding decisions for the members of a pol-
itical system) has so far been the core domain of national parliaments, it is
evident that the role of national parliaments is changing. These developments
indicate that the role and function of national parliaments in the European
Union would at least have to be redefined if national parliaments are still to
serve as one if not as the major pillar of democratic legitimacy. The Draft
Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe by the European Convention
(CONV 850/03), in particular in the Protocol on the Role of National Parliaments in the European Union, deals with this urgent institutional need and
aims at stronger information rights for national parliaments, at their partici-
pation in a ‘first reading’ of EU legislative proposals and even at a veto
right under certain conditions if they regard the proposal as non-compliant
with the principle of subsidiarity. The question is, however, to what degree
the proposed role of the national parliaments will be able to guarantee their
central function in providing and producing social legitimacy and to establish
a more stable or more transparent procedural legitimacy in the European
Union. Furthermore, the envisaged new role of national parliaments places
quite high demands on the institutional resources of national parliaments.
Another question is to what degree national parliamentarians regard the new
possibilities for national parliaments as sufficient and to what degree they
have already adapted to the Europeanisation of governance. And, finally,
one has to ask how parliamentarians in Europe see the future of the political
order. To some extent, these questions relate to two different aspects of
Europeanisation: institutional Europeanisationwith regard to the establishment
of new rules and procedures as well as new institutional provisions in national
parliaments to cope with the increasing impact of the European level; and
adaptive Europeanisation (also called strategic Europeanisation8) with regard
to attitudes, self-definition of roles, and behaviour of political actors, namely
parliamentarians.
