The politicization of interparliamentary relations in the EU: Constructing and contesting the ‘Article 13 Conference’ on economic governance

Abstract

Article 13 of the Fiscal Treaty (2012) prompted the creation of an interparliamentary conference to discuss and oversee the EU's post-crisis regime of economic governance. However, the first meeting of the "Article 13 Conference," in October 2013, was beset by conflict. Surprisingly, the main cleavage was not a leftright debate over economic policy (e.g. pro-vs. anti-austerity) but a debate about the nature and purpose of the conference itself. This pitted the European Parliament, preferring a weak conference with a narrow mandate, against a number of national parliaments that preferred a strong conference with a broad mandate. This cleavage was apparent in a series of constitutional, institutional and procedural disagreements which arose over the course of the setting-up of the Article 13 Conference, many of which remained unresolved even after its second and third meetings, in January and September 2014. At the root of this struggle lay competing visions for the parliamentary oversight of the EU: should scrutiny be centralized in the EP, or should there be a new system of joint scrutiny involving the EP and national parliaments together?

The European Semester: Democratic Weaknesses as Limits to Learning

“…4 Even the interparliamentary meetings that take place in March and April right before and after the SCPs and the NRPs do not allow for a real exchange of ideas on the Union's overall macroeconomic policy which is rather decided at executive level in successive Council and European Council meetings. Fabbrini et al (2015: 1) and Cooper (2016) arrive at a similar conclusion with regard to the Stability, Economic Coordination, and Governance conferences (as the conferences foreseen by Art. 13 TSCG were eventually called).…”

“…() had already arrived. Parallel studies by Sprungk () and Cooper () confirm this picture of a highly uneven (in)capacity and (un)willingness of national parliaments to scrutinize their executives’ activities in macroeconomic matters and engage in the budgetary exercises foreseen by the European Semester. This induces De Wilde and Raunio () to encourage national parliaments to redirect their efforts from a strict scrutiny of the subsidiarity and proportionality principles following the introduction of the Early Warning mechanism to all Council and European Council activities in a more interactive manner.…”

“…13 TSCG were eventually called). Cooper (: 197), in particular, highlights how their working was stalled by the different interpretations that MEPs and national MPs gave of their purpose (whether they were strong or weak conferences, that is, with or without the power to make collectively binding decisions) and scope (whether they were narrowly limited to discussing the implementation of the TSCG or conceived more broadly as capable of addressing a wider array of issues). Moreover, such conferences were scheduled at different times than the ES Interparliamentary Weeks, thus missing the opportunity to multiply the impact of these meetings by scheduling them back to back.…”

Parliamentary Networks in Transnational Economic Governance

“…13 заключённого в 2012 г. Фискального пакта 1 , впервые собралась на своё заседание в октябре 2013 г. Она позволяет парламентам обсуждать практику и обмениваться информацией по макроэкономическим дисбалансам, демократической легитимности программ корректировки национальной экономической политики, по продвижению мер создействия экономическому росту и созданию рабочих мест в Европейском союзе. Оговоримся, что соответствующие вопросы в ЕС входят в сферу компетенции национальных парламентов [2].…”

Governance Without Democracy? Analysing the Role of Parliaments in European Economic Governance after the Crisis: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…The Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Growth (SECG Conference), which is an outgrowth of Article 13 TSCG, has been largely ineffective. It has not given national parliaments an opportunity to directly scrutinise the EU executive and hold it accountable for its conduct in the European Semester (Cooper, 2016).…”