This article aims to analyse the European Parliament's (EP) position in the reform of the European economic governance, in particular after the adoption of the ‘six-pack,’ the ‘two-pack’ and the ‘fiscal compact.’ References are made to the involvement of the EP in the decision-making process that led to the adoption of the new measures as well as to the substantive role assigned to this institution in the new regulatory framework. The article argues that the new provisions, which undermine the budgetary authority of national parliaments while, at the same time, designing a limited role for the EP—though strengthened compared to the previous version of the Stability and Growth Pact—can jeopardise the effectiveness of the landmark principle of ‘no taxation without parliamentary representation’ in the EU

Although committees are deemed to be -in this century, as in the previous one -the 'legislative backbone' of legislatures, scholars have not devoted enough attention to how parliamentary committees cope with the challenge of the 'forced increased transparency' of their legislative activity, depending on the opportunity to use old and new media as channels of institutional communication with citizens. On the one hand, increased transparency could be an added value of their work. On the other hand, there is the risk that the wider disclosure of legislative committees' activity could undermine their ability to act as 'consensus-building' arenas, and thus affect their legislative capacity. The article argues that increasing levels of transparency can impair committees' lawmaking performance, so also undermining the lawmaking ability of their legislatures. In three very different legislatures (the US House of Representatives, the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the European Parliament), both in institutional architecture and committees' legislative powers, the growing transparency of their legislative activity has caused a shifting of the legislative decision-making away from committees or, even, outside the legislature.

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I-50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy www.eui.eu cadmus.eui.eu Constitutional Change through Euro-Crisis Law This paper was first delivered at a conference held at the European University Institute in October 2014 presenting some initial results of the project on Constitutional Change through Euro Crisis Law. This project is a study of the impact of Euro Crisis Law (by which is meant the legal instruments adopted at European or international level in reaction to the Eurozone crisis) on the national legal and constitutional structures of the 28 Member States of the European Union with the aim of investigating the impact of Euro Crisis law on the constitutional balance of powers and the protection of fundamental and social rights at national level. An open-access research tool (eurocrisislaw.eui.eu) has been created, based on a set of reports for each Member State, that constitutes an excellent resource for further, especially comparative, studies of the legal status and implementation of Euro Crisis law at national level, the interactions between national legal systems and Euro Crisis law and the constitutional challenges that have been faced. The project is based at the EUI Law Department and is funded by the EUI Research Council (2013-2015).

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