ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of parliaments in EU Foreign Policy (EUFP). In particular, the introduction of the ESDP into the Nice Treaty and the institutional changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty have prompted researchers to take national parliaments and the European Parliament (EP) more seriously into account if they want to explain the inputs and outcomes of EUFP. This chapter starts with an overview of the academic literature on the role of parliaments in EUFP: the overview shows that the role of national parliaments in EUFP has been understood to be quite diverse and, in the case of the EP, as rather insignificant until the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty. The chapter concludes that the institutional changes that empower parliaments such as those introduced by the Lisbon Treaty not only increase the complexity of decision-making in EUFP on vertical and horizontal dimensions, but also challenge our research designs methodologically and theoretically.
