Regional Parliaments and the Early Warning System: An Assessment Six Years after the Entry into Force of the Lisbon Treaty

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of regional parliaments with legislative competences in the Early Warning System (EWS) six years after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. To this end, the question of the regional participation is looked at from a broad perspective including the (potential) participation of regional parliaments in the Political Dialogue with the European Commission, be it through their national counterparts or with the Commission directly. This question is particularly relevant as even national parliaments tend to be less often involved in the Political Dialogue with the Commission over the last years and as the EWS has only been activated twice since the 1 December 2009.

This analysis finds, first of all, that not all regional parliaments have the guarantee that their opinion in matters of subsidiarity, or more generally on an EU topic, will be taken into account by their national parliaments. An empirical study of 17 out of 74 regional parliaments existing in the EU further shows that, globally, regional parliaments contribute fairly little to both the EWS and the Political Dialogue and they only marginally exchange with the Commission directly. Against this background, the present study makes some proposals for reform in closure, in particular to make the best use of the sometimes scarce regional parliamentary resources available.

Keywords: Regional parliaments, Early Warning System, Political Dialogue, Commission Annual Work Programme