The European Parliament and the UK Parliament: A Relationship in Foreign Policy

Abstract

It is often argued that the crucial democratic body of the European Union (EU) is the European parliament. Over time, the European parliament's role has increased from being a consultative body to one which has an institutionalised co‐decision authority in EU lawmaking. After the Lisbon treaty and the abolition of the Western European Union (WEU), the European parliament also has an increasingly important role as an intergovernmental European assembly. This article examines the British discussion about the country's commitment to parliamentary scrutiny, representation and supervision, in which the need for a genuine debate over representation within the EU is highlighted. British prime ministers have, in most cases, defined both the government's and parliament's stance on European integration either through their personal role, or through wide‐ranging discussions in their cabinets. However, in the 2000s, the Houses’ parliamentary committees have also influenced the shaping of the British position through their scrutiny of European policies. They were effective in the scrutiny of the Common Foreign and Defence Policy (CFDP), arguing that the government should keep parliament informed of discussions concerning the CFDP, and that the quality of the democratic process depended largely on the relationship between the British national parliament and the government. The parliamentary committees and the government both agreed that parliamentary scrutiny should not be left to the European parliament alone; the participation of national parliamentarians with specialist knowledge of the EU level was also seen as especially important.

Towards Balanced Bicameralism: Reconstruction of Law-making powers in Indonesian Representative Institutions

“…This situation is evidenced in a large number of countries that have a strong bicameral system, such as the United States, where the House of Representatives and the Senate have equal powers to evaluate all draft laws before they are submitted to the Executive. (Arcioni, 2014) (Kullaa, 2016) The United States Constitution in Article 1 paragraph (7) explicitly states that each laws aimed at increasing revenue must come from the House of Representatives, but just like with other bills, the Senate is free to suggest or approve alterations. Prior to becoming law, Towards Balanced Bicameralism: Reconstruction… every law that has been passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives must be submitted to the president of the United States.…”