NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS SCRUTINY OF EU LEGISLATION

There are four ways in which different scrutiny systems support parliamentarians to fulfil their motivations when engaging with EU matters:

1. Prioritisation of documents:  Prioritisation can reduce pressure on the scrutiny process and allow more time to be spent on important proposals. Documents can be prioritised on the basis of how relevant they are to national interests or on the stage of the legislative process to which they relate, and therefore whether it will be possible to engage with a given proposal at a later stage.
2. Providing access to expert support:  Dedicated policy advisers working closely with subject committees can help parliamentarians to understand the real-world impact of obscure or complex proposals. They can also highlight proposals that are likely to appeal to politicians because they touch on areas of their personal interest, or on high-profile national or constituency issues.
3. Facilitating contact with Ministers: Regular meetings allow exchange of views and debate. Providing regular and public opportunities to hold Ministers to account allows parliamentarians to demonstrate some impact on the legislative process.
4. Investing resources in building networks in Brussels : Having resources in Brussels can help flag new proposals, provide updates on their progress, facilitate contacts with EU institutions, help parliamentarians to navigate the EU processes and identify the best window for influence.

The aims of parliamentary scrutiny of EU legislation

Although the way in which national parliaments scrutinise EU legislation varies according to political context and institutional power, there are four common aims of scrutiny – that is, what national parliaments hope to achieve through engagement with EU legislation.

Aim 1: To identify issues of legal or political importance to the country: A key aim of parliamentary scrutiny is to identify those EU proposals that are of particular relevance to the national interest. Under the Lisbon Treaty, legislatures are sent not only draft legislation, but also a number of documents relating to proposals at earlier stages – such as consultations and green papers. Recently this has amounted to around 1,000 documents a year. All legislatures struggle with the number of proposals they are charged with scrutinising. Some continue to give politicians the opportunity to examine all documents received, at least superficially, but many have focused their efforts by considering only the most strategically or politically important. The sifting of documents to facilitate this is usually done by officials, with input from politicians or political groups. There is variation in the criteria used to judge the relevance of proposals, and in the process by which they are identified. Some legislatures have a strong pre-sifting process, whereby only proposals deemed important or relevant are subjected to further scrutiny, with a large proportion of documents being passed over; others spend time considering all, or nearly all, of the documents sent to national parliaments. The actors involved in scrutiny also vary across legislatures, with some relying on a single, central EU affairs committee (or similar) to identify relevant proposals and scrutinise them; other legislatures have mainstreamed scrutiny and use the policy expertise of subject committees to identify proposals that will affect national interests.

Methodology

• Prioritise documents to ensure that parliamentarians are able to engage with proposals at the right point in the legislative process, without being overwhelmed by the volume of EU documentation.
• Mainstream scrutiny of legislative proposals to subject committees with specialist knowledge of relevant policy areas.
• Appoint EU Reporters on subject committees as a ‘contact point’ between the committee responsible for scrutiny and those with expertise in related policy areas.
• Provide access to expert support from officials. Whether scrutiny is carried out by a single committee or is mainstreamed to subject committees, support from officials is important in helping parliamentarians to prioritise documents and to assess their implications.

Aim 2: To hold national Ministers to account and influence the government’s position on EU issues. The central role of any parliament is to hold the executive to account, and this is also true in the context of EU scrutiny. The EU institutions are not directly accountable to national parliaments – instead, national parliamentarians hold their Ministers to account for their negotiations in Europe and seek to influence their negotiating position.  Once legislatures have identified the EU proposals that are politically or legally significant, they can then try to influence the government’s position on that proposal and hold it to account for its activities at the EU level. Generally, influencing takes place in advance of Council meetings, where Ministers vote on EU proposals. In some legislatures post-Council scrutiny also features, where Ministers are questioned by parliamentarians on the outcome of Council meetings. Political context and institutional practice have a significant influence on how parliamentarians involved in EU scrutiny can exert influence on government and hold it to account. Moreover, changes to the way EU legislation is amended and decided mean that legislatures may wish to have an ongoing dialogue with Ministers, rather than meeting them only before and after Council meetings.

Methodology

• Establish formal opportunities to inform Ministers’ positions on EU proposals in advance of Council meetings; and to hold Ministers to account after Council meetings.
• Ensure that committees involved in scrutiny of proposals are kept up to date as the content and status of those proposals changes.

Aim 3: To influence EU policymaking directly. The traditional role of national parliaments has been to influence EU legislation indirectly, through national Ministers. With changes in the way EU legislation is agreed, influence on the voting and negotiating position of national Ministers is no longer guaranteed to translate into outcomes in relation to EU legislation. Proposals are often amended and agreed during ‘trilogues’ between key figures in the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council; with the Council Ministers eventually voting to approve a pre-agreed decision. This being the case, legislatures increasingly try to influence the content of EU proposals directly, by engaging in the early stages of the policymaking process,  for example by meeting with European Commissioners or MEPs.

Methodology

• Engage with EU legislative proposals at the early stages of development, through pre-legislative documents and meetings with the European Commission and Parliament.
• Establish resources in Brussels to provide information on proposals and facilitate meetings with key actors at the EU level.

Aim 4: To engage parliamentarians, expert stakeholders and the public in EU matters. The main audiences for the products of EU scrutiny are national governments and the European institutions. However, parliamentarians and officials engaged in EU scrutiny also see themselves as having a role in facilitating a wider discussion about EU issues: drawing key proposals to the attention of parliamentary colleagues; gathering the views of other interest groups to inform the national government position; and raising awareness of how EU issues affect citizens. With EU competences now covering a range of policy areas, engaging as many voices as possible enables legislatures to identify proposals that affect domestic interests.

Methodology

• Provide parliamentarians who are not directly involved in the scrutiny process with information and training about EU affairs, and encourage them to attend inter-parliamentary meetings.
• Enlist external experts and interest groups to highlight the impact of EU proposals on specific policy areas.
• Engage the wider public by making the scrutiny process as transparent as possible