Abstract
The Lisbon Treaty emphasized the importance of subsidiarity control in relation to the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). The article demonstrates that the types of reasoning national parliaments use to raise subsidiarity objections in the AFSJ depend less on the institutional strength of national parliaments in EU affairs and more on the institutional evolution and material scope of EU proposals. Relying on the AFSJ case, the article shows that national parliaments use a narrow legal interpretation of subsidiarity when the EU legislation threatens Member States' legal traditions and State powers. However, concerns about the respect of national legal diversity are replaced by a more political approach to subsidiarity control when politically sensitive and contentious issues are at stake.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1573-1589 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Common Market Studies |
| Volume | 59 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The Commission received four reasoned opinions from the German Bundesrat, the Swedish Riksdag, the Estonian Riigikogu and the Czech Senate. However, only the German Bundesrat and the Riksdag respected the eight‐week deadline of the EWM. Although the national chambers mixed arguments about the competences of the EU with regard to data processing and the legal basis with subsidiarity concerns, their reasoned opinions followed a rather narrow legal reasoning.
Funding Information:
I would like to thank Prof Ben Crum, the participants of the panel ‘National parliaments in action as a remedy for the sovereignty drain?’ at the 26th International Conference of Europeanists and two anonymous referees for their detailed and insightful comments on this paper, as well as Stelian Dumitrescu for his help with the data collection. The work is supported by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen postdoctoral fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd