ABSTRACT
Have national parliaments been reduced to mere talking shops or are they truly deliberative bodies involved in the reform of European economic governance? In other words, are national parliaments nothing more than venues for superficial discussion? Have MPs become devoid of formal powers and motivation to perform their constitutional roles? Or, on the contrary, have they successfully carried out their legislative, control and representative functions? Finally, does the reform period with which we are concerned constitute only a brief interruption in the Lisbon Process or is it something new? In order to answer these questions we evaluated the performance of national parliaments during the European financial crisis in terms of the three major functions of national parliaments, namely, law-making competences – ratification of international agreements – government scrutiny and representation.
