PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

168 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
As we noted in the introduction to this chapter, for a variety of reasons
which differ from one region to another, States have decided to integrate gradually
their markets, economies and other sectors of the State. By definition this
means relinquishing, if only very partially, some sovereignty to a common
regional structure. This is fundamentally different from the cooperation that
takes place between States at the global level, where States have not agreed to
relinquish any of their authority and, in principle, participate on equal terms.
Common to the regional integration processes is the establishment of a
governance structure that takes its inspiration from the national State. Hence,
some form of executive and parliament are set up for this new regional entity.
These regional parliaments exist alongside the national parliaments and
complement each other much in the same way as do the two chambers of a
bicameral parliament in a federal State; one represents the community views
and interests, the other the national views and interests.
In this section we shall consider the situation in the European Union (EU)
since it is the most advanced regional integration process in existence in the
world today and we shall focus on the challenges that regional integration
poses to the national parliaments.
Many of the European parliaments making submissions to this Guide
described the issue of oversight of their government’s EU policy as a major
challenge. Their accounts of attempts to address it will hopefully have a wider
interest, as they exemplify a pattern that may become increasingly common
where parliaments surrender legislative competence to supranational institutions
in order to tackle common regional or global problems. The issue for
national parliaments, therefore, is how to monitor and influence the positions
taken by their own ministerial representatives in these institutions. The issue
is well defined in a submission from the Polish Senate:
Involving the national parliament in the mechanism of deciding the
government position presented subsequently to the EU is a way of
overcoming the European Union’s deficit of democratic legitimacy.
To put it briefly, that deficit is associated with the overall legitimacy
of an Executive representing a Member State in the EU and the ensuing
marginalization of the role of representative bodies.
……Consequently, the transfer of entitlements from the national
parliament to the Union necessitates a certain compensation, and
that is precisely what the reinforcement of parliamentary competencies
in cooperating with the national government on European
decisions is supposed to ensure.