PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

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An effective parliament (II): Parliament’s involvement in international affairs I 169 How this cooperation is ensured varies considerably among the Union’s Members. Many parliaments address this through the mechanism of a European Affairs Committee, which is entitled to receive all relevant EU documents in advance of negotiating positions to be taken by ministers in the Council of Ministers. Yet the Polish Senate notes that “most national legislatures are not granted the competency to formulate their position in an imperative manner that would bind the national government”. This conclusion perhaps understates the extent of parliamentary influence that is exercised in practice, as a number of our submissions show. So, for example, the submission from the German Parliament states that “the Federal Government must provide the Bundestag with an opportunity to state its position, which it must take as the basis of its negotiating position in the Council”. And here is the procedure adopted by the European Affairs Committee (EAC) of the Danish Parliament in its weekly meetings: The most important items on the agenda of the European Affairs Committee are the meetings to be held by the Council of Ministers the following week. Discussion of a specific Council meeting by the European Affairs Committee usually involves the minister in question attending a meeting and making an oral presentation on the mandate for negotiation. Then there follows a round in which the party spokespersons put questions to the minister and make known the party’s response to some of the proposals. Once the minister has replied there may be one or more rounds of discussions, during which the minister can clarify or modify his mandate for negotiation. The minister may also change the mandate for negotiation in deference to the party spokespersons and in order to ensure that a majority is not against it…… The Committee does not reject the government’s mandate very often. But this does not mean that the Committee does not have much influence on the government’s EU policy. Firstly, it is not uncommon for the government to change or modify its original mandate for negotiation during the discussions of the Committee. Secondly, the Danish civil servants who take part in the negotiations at an early stage – frequently before the European Commission makes its proposal – allow for the fact that the government will have to have the result approved by the European Affairs Committee at some stage. The Danish submission notes that an important factor in the exercise of parliamentary influence is early notice of the European Commission’s proposals to the Council of Ministers, and of the government’s attitude towards them.
170 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A recent innovation is the requirement that the government indicate its general attitude to any Commission proposal in the basic memorandum to be presented to the EAC no later than four weeks after a proposal is tabled by the Commission. This point about early notice is also emphasised in the submission from the Finnish Parliament, which tries to ensure that its own opinion on EU business is issued early enough to be known to the civil servants who attend the Council’s working groups. As a rule, items before the ministers at the EU Council have been decided by Member States’ representatives in the civil servants’ working groups preparing the Council, leaving only a few contentious details for the ministers. It follows that hearing ministers is not sufficient to preserve the Eduskunta’s influence……The Finnish system is based on the idea that national parliaments only have real influence when they participate in policy formulation from the start. Influence that is projected only on the eve of a Council meeting would be largely illusory. Some parliaments have resorted to establishing offices in Brussels at the European Commission’s headquarters. This is the case of the French Parliament, for example. Among other things, such offices are helpful in ensuring that parliament gets early notice of developments in Brussels. They also provide a more direct means of portraying the views of the parliament to the central European institutions. The Finnish Parliament makes a distinction between “proposals for acts, treaties and other measures” to be decided upon in the European Council that would fall within the purview of the Parliament of Finland were it not a member of the EU, and other business. For the former, the procedure is more thorough, involving the relevant sectoral committees which provide informed opinions to the Grand Committee. The Slovenian Parliament makes a similar distinction. With regard to those matters which would have come under Parliament’s jurisdiction “if Slovenia had not transferred the exercise of part of its sovereignty rights to EU institutions”, the procedure is regulated by an Act on cooperation between the National Assembly and the Government in EU affairs. This Act gives the Assembly the right to adopt a position on forthcoming EU business, which the government is required to take into account in its negotiating position. The government is also required to provide the National Assembly with an impact assessment of any proposals for European legislative acts before the Council of Ministers, which details their implica-
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Electoral systems A representative
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■ the fixed office; An accessible
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case in Switzerland, the country wi
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An effective parliament (I): The na
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