Rather than becoming obsolete, national parliaments have come back obstinately in the politics of trade. This article develops this proposition and explores its contribution to the idea of 21 st-century trade as contentious market regulation. Contra the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments' assertion entrenches the role of domestic actors in the EU trade liberalization policy, and fleshes out its multi-level parliamentary bases. We discuss the role, drivers, and patterns of parliamentary assertion and explore parliamentary assertion using preliminary survey and case study material. We find that the TTIP negotiations represented the tippingpoint of parliamentary assertion. Through interpretation and political engagement, national parliaments have forged a role for themselves that was unforeseen in the Lisbon Treaty: weighing in on the policy-making and the ratification processes. In Europe, parliamentary assertion reflected the twin impact of a changing global trade agenda and the centralization of the EU trade policy regime.
This article explores how and why domestic policies and political systems of European nation-states are being changed due to the articulation of a ‘need’ for adaptation to the policies of the European Union (EU). Domestic policy changes are legitimised with reference to the conception of the inevitability of European integration. Under certain circumstances Europeanisation processes occur even in areas where we find neither ‘de jure’ nor ‘de facto’ needs for harmonisation with EC/EU policy. Non-EU-induced ‘adaptation to the EU’ is thus claimed to be an underestimated dynamic of Europeanisation. The article analyses processes of construction and communication of policy change proposals leading to Europeanisation and domestic institutional change. It presents a case study analysis of the processes leading to the 1993 tax reform in Denmark, as well as the processes leading to the 1997 reform of Danish competition legislation. In both cases major changes to policies and institutions were initiated and to a large extent legitimised with reference to a ‘need’ for adaptation to the Internal Market. The necessity for actual harmonisation was and is still questionable.
The continuum of Internal Market regulation comprises various kinds of regulatory measures, including legislation, harmonized and non-harmonized standards, and private ‘self-regulation’ of different origins. Public, as well as private actors, participate in the continuous development of European regulation. The different actors’ competences and roles vary during the processes, but it is evident that both public and private actors obtain a vital position in the collective production of European regulation. This article contributes with a mapping and categorization of the applied regulatory ‘means and measures’ related to Internal Market regulation and an assessment of stakeholder participation in three categories. Firstly, this article provides an outline of contemporary EU regulatory policies applied in the Internal Market regulation, and discusses the concepts of regulatory governance and regulation. Secondly, the different variants of regulation are allocated within three main categories: (1) public legislation; (2) co-regulation, and; (3) private selfregulation. Case examples of the different categories of regulation are explicated to illustrate the variances among the three types and of the ex-ante participatory processes. Finally, the article provides an assessment of stakeholder participation vis-à-vis the three categories of regulation.
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