A yellow card for the striker: national parliaments and the defeat of EU legislation on the right to strike

Abstract

In May 2012 national parliaments of the EU issued their first yellow card under the Early Warning Mechanism of the Treaty of Lisbon. A sufficient number of them raised objections to a legislative proposal-the Monti II Regulation regarding the right to strike-that the Commission was required to review the proposal, which it subsequently withdrew. This outcome was, demonstrably, not a coincidence but the product of extensive interparliamentary coordination, enabled by the initiative of one determined parliament (Denmark's Folketing), a well-timed COSAC meeting, and the network of national parliament representatives in Brussels. A dynamic political process was set in motion in which a number of parliaments joined the effort to obtain a yellow card by, in effect, "voting against" Monti II before the eight-week deadline.

Euroscepticism and the Early Warning System

“…In addition, only one of the related proposals was retracted by the Commission. In 2012, the Commission retracted the Monti II proposal related to the freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services after it received a yellow card (Cooper, ). While the proposal was retracted, the Commission claimed the reason behind the retraction was a lack of support in the Council and the European Parliament, not an infringement on subsidiarity.…”

Beyond Institutional Capacity: Political Motivation and Parliamentary Behaviour in the Early Warning System

“…see Cooper 2012; Neuhold 2011). Cooper (2013) argues that COSAC meetings provide an opportunity for exchanging views on draft legislative acts in the EWS, as in the case with the Monti II regulation. To assess the impact of formal coordination activities between national parliaments we include the variable COSAC in the models.…”

Parliamentary Administrations in EU Politics: The Sources and Impact of Diversity

“…As a result, administrators have the opportunity to influence the agenda of their parliament in EU affairs scrutiny through the preselection of dossiers, and to further influence the discussions through their advice. In addition, almost all national parliaments have representatives in Brussels that provide an important coordination function between national parliaments and between a national parliament and the EU institutions (Cooper 2013;Neuhold and Högenauer 2013).…”