 But anyway, it's a real pleasure to be here in Dublin today, and thank you very much also to the Board of the Institute for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here also at a relatively opportune moment in terms of a discussion on democracy in the European Union with the pending European Parliament elections right across Europe, as we all know. I'm actually sort of deliberately chose to focus on the national Parliament rather than on the European Parliament, because at this particular moment in European integration I think it's especially salient, more than ever, and across a broad range of institutions and actors that in fact it's crucial in terms of improving in any way the democratic deficit that national parliaments also engage with the European Union. And in a sense, and I think that's also one of my conclusions, take national ownership to some extent at least of what's going on. Now what I'm saying doesn't mean that I believe that the European Parliament has no role or that it's not in some ways doing good work. I'm not saying that at all and I will come back to that at the very end to dwell on that, and then I hope in questions that because a lot of this, for me it's very much about both the European Parliament and the national parliaments in terms of the future of democracy in the European Union. And I think it's a salient topic, in fact I'm doing research at the moment that is looking at the role of presidents of a number of the important, what I call, executive actors in the European Union in terms of being held to account or engaging in a process of information giving and dialogue. And in that sense, of course, and that's haphazard, that the fact that Jean-Claude Trichet yesterday refused to come before the banking committee of the Arctus, I think, you know, figures in that bigger picture and we can if you like come back to that or I may refer to it as we go along. So that's basically the general background for my talk. I think I'll start, oh yeah no I have to do it here, sorry wait a moment, let's get that. In fact I get that the title of the talk was deliberately provocative but also rhetorical, are national parliaments behind the loop and does it matter and basically we can answer that very quickly, yes they are behind the loop and yes it does matter and of course the ultimate question is well what should one do about that in what context. So I hope that my talk will provide at least some meat for a further and deeper discussion on that issue and not, I'll do my best not to be too academic about it. Well I think one of the phenomenon in the European Union that we're living in today which in effect is post-crisis, obviously post the Lisbon Treaty but also post various crisis measures that have been taken is one where the executive power dominates and then if the executive power dominates then obviously parliaments don't and parliaments have a much weaker position, that's the implication and in terms of executive dominance we have various actors at the European Union level but my belief is we can't any more be simplistic in the way that we describe the nature of these actors and we can't describe even the European Commission as only supranational nowadays, we can't describe the European Council or the Council of Ministers as been mainly intergovernmental, they're both intergovernmental and supranational, the European Central Bank is obviously also supranational so this is a kind of a change in our thinking and this has to do with the powers, the new powers and tasks that have been acquired by these various actors in particular and that's going to be my emphasis today post-crisis and I think one of the fundamental things and why the role of the national parliament is so important is that it's often forgotten that in crucial institutions, European Council is now since the Treaty of Lisbon and institution at the European level, it's the national executives that are composed of the national executives both the European Council and the Council of Ministers so that means and that's also stressed in the Treaty of Lisbon the lines of accountability are also very much for those national ministers and the national prime minister to the national level at the same time of course these actors, institutions have powers and responsibilities at the European level so for the collectivity of the actor there has to be accountability also at the European level and that means the European Parliament, it's the only, it doesn't mean only the European Parliament of course but if you're talking about political accountability then it is the European Parliament you can have other kinds of supranational accountability for example legal accountability to the European Court of Justice you know if cases come before it and are justiciable before it that's one kind it can also be more administrative kind of accountability not unimportant for example the European ombudsman come back to that maybe later but in any event this is sort of the broader palette if you like of the important key actors now admittedly we had a discussion also at lunchtime the actors are of different nature as you have the highly political European Council the equally political in many ways Council of Ministers you have the traditionally less political European Commission although I don't think that's necessarily true anymore and you have the European Central Bank that many would describe as a more technocratic kind of actor as sort of expert based actor it's certainly not meant to be a political actor it's supposed to be removed precisely from the political domain and what I put in at the end what we see happening in recent years also is an accentuated role for the presidents of these institutions in fact all four of them now the Council of Ministers as we know rotates but the others the European Council and even the Euro summits which is the Eurozone specific European Council if you like and the European Commission and the European Central Bank those three presidents are very prominent have been very institutionalised and we do see the presidents on behalf of the institutions coming more and more to give account to the European Parliament but also increasingly to the national parliaments and I think the latter is in particular important okay let me move on and I just keep an eye on the time but let me move on to say well what I'm not talking about today that's perhaps because one one talks about the role of national parliaments in general one one is inclined to think well what is their role traditionally in the European Union in terms of legislation and their involvement in in that sense and that's important but it's only a small part of what the European Union does nowadays it's actually numerically also a very small part it's not unimportant certainly not you know we've seen there has been very important legislation the two-pack legislation the six-pack legislation that were both adopted recently are crucial legislative instruments but it's only a small part of what is happening but even if we look at the the role of the national parliaments in terms of legislation and we can come back to this maybe in the discussion if there's an interest in it in the Lisbon Treaty the national parliaments were given more of a role in that sense in the sense that they could provide a kind of a subsidiarity check on legislation and they could you know they could network together with a number of national parliaments and they could try and prevent legislation being adopted at an early stage was kind of called the early warning mechanism that's part of the legislative procedure in practice that has been a highly problematic procedure and some people will say you know when you think about the role of the national parliaments in the future of the European Union we need to think about reforming that procedure and you know making it a red card or a green card or you know that sort of thing and maybe change the condition slightly and I think well yes that's fine and you can certainly discuss how you can improve that procedure but that's only a tiny part of what's necessary in terms of a role you know a more accentuated role for national parliaments and a very limited one of that in that respect one of the problems in terms of legislation and then I'm going to leave this topic in terms of also the involvement of national parliaments on the legislation that is being adopted at the European level is that over 80 percent of legislative instruments in the last parliamentary term were adopted according to the in what are known as trial of meetings before the first reading in parliament so basically that means behind closed doors representatives of the European parliament of the council of ministers and of the commission because the commission initiates the legislation they agree and negotiate as if it were a sort of diplomatic agreement almost the provisions of the legislation and that's agreed and then only is adopted as a legislative instrument now aside from the issue of secrecy and the lack of public debate on crucial issues of legislation this also means that national parliaments are out of the loop at a at a certain stage because they don't know their minister might not even know because it's representatives of the council that are actually in the trial of meetings so there is a a discord there we can talk about that more if there's if there's interest but what I really wanted to focus on is the non what is actually formally called in the Treaty of Lisbon the non legislation that's actually used as a formal term to refer to more implementing acts and delegated legislation but it can be used much in a much wider sense to refer to everything all the rules and norms that are adopted by the European Union that are not of a legislative nature and legislation is quite specifically for the first time defined in the Lisbon Treaty and that's obviously crucial in areas such as the European semester which is now about to be you know right now actually so important in the Irish context but also in terms of what the European Central Bank is doing foreign policy international agreements etc so let me so oh sorry gosh I knew I got that wrong okay now I have to go back okay these are just tables I'm focusing basically in my talk on three actors the European Council the Commission and the European Central Bank and you see there of a traditionally regarded as being of a different nature this is basically just the broader frame in terms of accountability and all you really need to focus on is just the existence of this frame and I'm only focusing on the democratic element and you know traditionally the thinking would be well the European Council is composed of the Prime Ministers of Member States so the accountability should only be at the national domain and that's not entirely the case anymore because there is also some very limited accountability at the European domain and the supranational would traditionally be this is the importance really of the European parliamentary elections it's the relationship between the Commission and the European Parliament because that's the most developed at the supranational level in terms of political accountability for the Commission but with the changing powers of the Commission particularly in the European semester processes and the if you like the manner in which the European Commission acquires powers over you know such the national budgets basically and over the the parameters within which they take place the national part the issue of Commission accountability to national parliaments must become particularly crucial the European Central Bank isn't developed there but I can say something about that later I'm going to go on quite quickly and this is basically restating the same thing that that the base the European Council who it should be accountable to and the Commission let me go on quite quickly on this just to be you know as a scholar we like to be precise in terms of well what do we mean by accountability it's an often a very overused term and it's good to think about conceptually what what we think about it I have done empirical work together with political scientists where we used a definition that's broad enough to embrace different kinds of accountability including political accountability you know relationship between an actor and a forum it can be any actor any forum and there are three basic elements an obligation to explain and justify questioning and the fact that they may face consequences it doesn't have to be legal sanctions this is just put in a different way the three different components to accountability information debate and some sort of consequence consequences deliberately meant to be a sort of weaker way of expressing that and I think you know this is something also that applies both of the European level and at the national level in particular information do parliaments be they national are you European do they get the information they need on time and in a complete fashion or at least do they have access to that and in that context the access they get and this is something that I hope will come back in the in the questions the access to information they get from their own government is particularly important are they getting access to direct access to for example the databases the government databases with all the EU information including limited information which is so-called limited information which is meant to cover kind of internal information work that is in progress it's actually used the figures I think of something like 60 percent of all non or even more of all non public information is is limited that means it's non public but our parliaments getting at you know are getting access to that and under what conditions some parliaments are some national parliaments are some aren't the European parliament is when they get access to that to do that are they must they keep it secret and who sets these rules on what national parliaments need to do with this information is and it is in fact the council of ministers but it's not through legislation that has been publicly debated it's in fact through the internal rules of the council of ministers based on its own rules of procedure that are then applied more widely by basically by all the actors and institutions in and this is a key issue in my view because information is key to any kind of accountability process if you don't have you know the raw information even if you have to keep it secret as a parliament you know even if there are constraints in the way it can be used and it's very hard to engage in any kind of and accountability process which are the subsequent stages all right i'm conscious of the time how long more do i have well no i think there was an agreement that i would all right yeah yeah yeah no i won't keep going i'd like to have a debate and dialogue it's all very well to give information but okay i'll go on for a maximum another 10 minutes all right so basically what i thought i would do is focus what i have been saying on the european semester and because i think that's you know it's crucial in in all the member states but i think in particular perhaps in the irish context where ireland having just exited the program and for the first time being involved in the in the european semester process you can hardly read this yeah sorry this was actually from the european parliament's website which actually was the most complete in terms of the description and the reason i'm doing this i'm showing it like this you don't need to see all the different details but you see the different actors that are involved in the european semester so it's not only the european commission as we might be inclined to think very important at crucial moments is the role of the council in particular the euro group also the european council so it's not only the commission even if the commission has a very important role at different moments and at very key moments and actually one of the very key moments is right now in may when it's defining also the draft country specific recommendations that's of crucial importance obviously for the national budgets and they will subsequently be adopted by the council and endorsed ultimately by the european council now the reason i include this particular version of the european semester because it does actually show i think quite neatly and it's from the european parliament both where the european parliament can be involved in the process but also that there is a role for the national parliaments and i think if you think about the logic of this what is actually being dealt with and at and decided at the european level concerning the specifics of national budgets then it's totally obvious and rational that the national parliaments must also be involved and basically and i've started studying this a bit empirically because we do have some data at this point because it's the fourth time for many countries that the european semester has been in operation so there is some evidence if you like that that's available but you basically see even from this diagram that there is a very limited involvement of parliaments but there's not no involvement but there is a limited involvement now the european parliament it's the most developed and i'll come to that in a moment and you see that there is some debate and a resolution on the semester and the country specific recommendations and there is something new called the european parliamentary week which is in pink the box at the end in the middle and that's a new initiative in this context is kind of interparliamentary engaging both the european parliament and the national parliaments and so that's something new that is emerging and it's interesting to look and see whether that what sort of form and flesh that's been given and there's economics dialogues going on with the EU institutions and member states and basically this involves the so-called euro commissioner ollie ren going to the committee in question the economic and monetary committee of the european parliament and engaging in a dialogue with the european parliament let me move on from this yeah so you see and this is on the basis of some empirical work of you see that the euro commissioner ollie ren in in particular goes to the european parliamentary plenary gives some information there is some dialogue but not very much because it's on the basis of a set speech and and there is little direct reaction to the questions that are put so if you analyze it in terms of accountability you can conclude basically fairly quickly that it's not very demanding for the executive actor in question if you look at what's happening in terms of the economic dialogue before the economic and monetary committee of the european parliament there is more information being given than in the plenary sessions and there is some dialogue and answering of debate but again it's it's also relatively limited and within strict time limits and you know you can also wonder well does that resonate more widely that's of course a bigger question you know i had a research assistant who helped me who plowed through all this information who listened to online videos some of which weren't translated and and you know so it's a bit of a struggle to extract the information so this is not something that's easily accessible you know to the public to national parliaments or whatever you do see in terms of the practice before national parliaments there is a practice of for example ollie ren coming to he has come to a certain number of national parliaments i think it was about six all together in this period of almost four years but again it's it tends to be more more of a general nature in fact kathryn day came recently to the iraqtas earlier this year in in that sort of capacity explaining the european semester and but you know and it was interesting but it was it all remains rather general and it's it's certainly not a question where the executive is really being challenged in a way that matters and there have been some national parliaments are changing their practices as a result of these initiatives we've seen that also with regard to which i won't have time to go into today the importance of the european council meetings there has been a change of practice by certain national parliaments in the sense that they are having plenary debates before the european parliaments take sorry before the european council meetings take place they happen and they are in public so there might also be the media will possibly engage with it depending on the salience of the issue but for european council meetings they tend to be you know the important milestones and where the european union is going be at banking union or whatever so certain national parliaments are changing changing their practices but often they all struggle and we see there have been a number of recent reports not only in the uk where there's been both a house of commons report and a house of lords report but also in in other jurisdictions we see that the national parliaments all struggle with not getting the information they need on time from their own governments or otherwise but it generally needs to be from their own government and if they do for example the danish and finnish and and even the the germans i'll come to that in a moment do get the information they need but they have to discuss it and debate it behind closed doors so there can't be any public public translation of that so basically i think one of the issues that needs to be thought about more profoundly is the issue that i would call a national ownership of certain process i mean you know of course to the extent that it's possible one shouldn't be unrealistic about these things but i think that's part of the process that and this is a proposal by the danish parliament from last year that there needs to be an adaptation of the national budgetary processes and to what's happening in europe so that the national actors the government and the parliaments the national parliaments can really that there can be a discussion by national parliaments in a manner to influence their own government prior to the european decisions being taken and at the crucial moments and that needs to begin quite early on and that can have implications for the way in which the national budgetary process goes for example in the netherlands they're now debating moving the adoption of the budget to a different time to be more in parallel with what's happening at the european level that's just one example but i think that's the kind of debate that we need to have so how do you match what you're having to follow with the european level but how can you make the role that can be played by national parliaments in particular more effective i'm switching a little bit here but i this is also a little bit a theme of national ownership in the sense that i think one of the more interesting things that has emerged recently and it's only from last year by the way it's available online the germans are amazing even when they have an important constitutional court judgment it's immediately online in english you know so the whole world can follow it but also with this piece of legislation which is actually important and i think in many ways could be a model for other national parliaments and it was also immediately and is available online in english well translated now of course people will say oh yes but the Bundestag only they only adopted this because the german constitutional court more or less said that they had to in an important judgment on the ESM about two years ago that may be the case but nevertheless if you look at the information that the government is now obliged and it's a legal obligation and they are supplying a huge having to supply a huge range of information to the german parliament in a way i think that is unmatched almost by any other parliament perhaps the finish or the danish where they can directly access also the government database might come close in practice but in terms of a legal obligation and in terms of of of all the various actors you know because a lot of action at the european level is also at the informal level informal meetings you know they're and even the trial of meetings that i referred to in the beginning they're also they're not regulated in the treaty they don't have to take place this is a practice that has evolved an inter institutional practice and so in that sense informal and it covers very early stage and meetings that are taking important decisions so this means the engagement can be more what's known as upstream so it can be earlier on and rather than when it's too late you know when everything has more or less been decided so again this is part of my thesis and that information is absolutely crucial in this context and of course you know i recognize and some people would say quite rightly these are not easy issues there are no easy solutions it's not a magic bullet i'm not saying that at all and because one of the problems is well this is all very well but you know we're already overloaded with everything we get from europe do we want even more and how are we going to process that and are we expert enough even to process that and and and all that sort of thing i mean these are issues that all national parliaments struggle with in the netherlands it's exactly the same they're under resourced they don't have the staff to the research staff that can help in the analysis of of this sort of thing one of my and so resources of national parliaments is really a hugely important issue in order to be able to exercise accountability in any kind of effective fashion but i also believe that by publicity and can also help because if there are debates on the basis of public documents then you can you can take evidence or have witnesses or whatever but also non-governmental organizations or whatever can express a view they can point out certain risks there can be some comparative work done in the public domain which i think is is obviously important in in matters that are of a huge public interest and this is my last slide and and so at the very end we come back to well this is all very well but what does this mean for the european parliament particularly two weeks before the european parliamentary elections so i'm not saying that the solution to the democratic deficit is reinforcing the role of national parliaments only because in fact traditionally that would be regarded as a very reactionary position certainly from within those who are if you like true believers of the value of european integration national parliaments are viewed as a kind of threat to the european integration process but i suppose i'm a i'm what you might call a legal realist i think we have to look at what is action what is the nature of european integration actually today what is happening who are these actors how do they perform their tasks and then look at the role of various parliaments at various levels of governments and that includes both the european parliament and the and the national parliament and i just make two final concluding remarks if i may and one is that political leaders today in the context of the future of europe debate you know including the british prime minister but also the the dutch prime minister and others when talking about the democratic deficit they increasingly say yes we must have less of a role for the european parliament and more of a role for the national parliaments and then they go on very quickly to say yes it must be at a sort of we set up a special new parliament that will be composed of members of the national parliaments and the european parliament you know we'll have a eurozone parliament or we'll reinforce kozak kozak is already the inter-parliamentary entity it's not an institution that already exists and that is quite weak and my reaction to that is well this is of course what would suit very well the executive power because it will be completely unthreatening and weak so and what we need in fact is that the national parliaments themselves take ownership nationally but also act together more horizontally with one another at key moments in the process and i've elsewhere argued in fact they should be disobedient even disobedient with regard to their government or even the supranational actors there are ways of forcing information out into the public domain and of engaging of really challenging executive power i mean it's not something that's going to happen overnight it's not easy but there is something that is beginning i think actually i'm not i'm not pessimistic in that in that sense i think something is happening and that we will see progress in that regard and the other thing is the european parliament the european parliament is of course also a crucial actor not only in terms of legislation but also in terms of holding the collectivity of power at the european level to some sort of account to some sort of public debate be it the european parliament or increasingly the european central bank that itself proclaims that it's only accountable to the european parliament but not the national level in my and this is coming back to what i opened with and also the remarks of jean claude trichet yesterday that this is actually quite an old-fashioned view of because the european central bank has evolved enormously um because of banking union and because of practices over the course of the past few years so since the last uh treaty and since the constitution if you like or the charter of the european central bank um was set up so i think it's it's simply not correct to say that an entity such as the european central bank can be only responsible to the european parliament but also needs to be responsible to national parliaments and should be prepared to engage with a dialogue um at that level as well but there will be other areas and these really are my final comments where um you can only envisage a supranational role for the european parliament for example with regard to international agreements um and and the engagement um because the european parliament has the power to veto international agreements so that implies that it must also engage in the process um and as we know there are um incredibly important issues that are being dealt with at the level of international agreements so not just uh swift like um you know the anti-terrorist um international agreements in exchange of information but also for example the us eu uh trade agreement that is currently under negotiation so thank you very much and i hope that i haven't overloaded you thank you