National Parliaments Get Bigger Say in Europe

Because of the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments get a bigger say in European affairs. They are now entitled to give their opinion on decisions which will affect all the European Union member states. The national parliaments are accorded eight weeks in which they may say if they think a certain piece of European legislation would best be dealt with at national level. They can definitely put the brakes on. When at least a eight of them challenge the legitimacy of an EU proposal, the Commission has to go back to the drawing board. When 14 of the national parliaments oppose it, the Commission needs to submit a new proposal.

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[mtlilr]

if that's not democracy, then what democracy is? I support this initiative! I think it'll work well for the EU.

[pilhamu]

What you did was to opine without regard to the facts, based on deferral to EUXTV who may itself be just deferring to the Commission, which unfortunately has a trackrecord of shameless doublespeak, both in press releases and legal texts, matched only by the doublespeak of totalitarian states as Orwell described it.

[pilhamu]

But, with all your honesty, you evade the question of where the blocking mechanism is that goes beyond delaying for 2 months and beyond legal questions of whether something violates subsidiarity.

[Inky261]

I hope they do away with odd sizes in food, lack of quality in food. odd sizes raised our food prizes by 20 percent. i hope they do away with eu and give ous our borders back, poland is 100 km away.

i would like to get rid of the eu citizenship.

[MarquisdeBarrabas]

I read the whole article plus the Protocol on the Role of National Parliaments in the EU, and also the relevant parts of the consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, and I couldn't find what you just said was in the Treaty.

Now I'm the first to admit I'm not a legal expert. But I think it's more honest to admit to my ignorance and to defer to people who know more than me (in this case the EUXTV people) than to just opine without regard for the facts.

[pilhamu]

OK, go read also the rest of Article 8 and the context and tell me where you find any rea blocking (not just short-term-delaying) mechanism that could be worth the pain of coordinating 14 national parliaments.

[MarquisdeBarrabas]

'See Art 8c of the Treaty'

What on earth are you talking about?

Article 8 C (under Article 1 of the Treaty of Lisbon) makes no mention of the Court of Justice.

[pilhamu]

"The Commission needs to submit a new proposal" means that the procedure is delayed by 2 months. The last say is thus still with the European Court of Justice, also frequently referred to as the "motor of European integration", to which these 14 parliaments can then file a lawsuit, accusing the Commission of excessive integration efforts. See Art 8c of the Treaty.

[MarquisdeBarrabas]

What part of

' accorded eight weeks in which they may say if they think a certain piece of European legislation would best be dealt with at national level.'

and

'at least a eight of them challenge the legitimacy of an EU proposal, the Commission has to go back to the drawing board. When 14 of the national parliaments oppose it, the Commission needs to submit a new proposal.'

don't you understand?

[pilhamu]

The Lisbon treaty "empowers" the national parliaments to give non-binding opinions on subidiarity.

OTOH the ministerial bureaucrats gain real legislative power over a dynamically growing set of areas that used to be national domains.

The Council and Commission are the ones who are empowered to subsume ever more fields of legislation into the european sphere whenever that helps them bypass the resistance of elected national legislators.

One empowerement is real, the other is cosmetic.