ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the relations between the European Union and the United States, as two key global strategic partners, from the perspective of parliamentary relations. Having developed since 1972, when the US congressional delegation first visited Brussels, EU–US parliamentary liaison has gained momentum. This trend intensified with the establishment in 1999 of the Transatlantic Legislators’ Dialogue (TLD) as a bilateral EU–US inter-parliamentary forum. An ever greater number of policy matters bear transatlantic significance, with the European Parliament and the US Congress often being sidelined in intergovernmental negotiations and prevented from exercising democratic oversight.
The analysis in this chapter begins with a conceptualization of parliamentary involvement in international and interregional affairs using the literature on parliamentary diplomacy and democratization of global governance. It proceeds with an examination of the scope of dialogue occurring within TLD and with regard to bilateral international agreements between the EU and the US. This is followed by an empirical investigation using the example of transatlantic inter-parliamentary cooperation regarding the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme. This Scheme was explicitly rejected by the US Congress by means of a statute, which prohibited US airline companies from participating in this Scheme. More specifically, the chapter enquires whether there were any discussions between the European Parliament and US Congress regarding this legislative dossier and, if so, what the main arguments were. The goal is to determine the outcome not only of direct dialogues between American and EU parliamentarians but also of unilateral parliamentary pronouncements regarding this dossier. This will yield invaluable insight into the nature, scope and effect of transatlantic parliamentarianism.
