National Parliaments in the European Union. Collective Action under the Early Warning Mechanism

Abstract: The 2009 Lisbon Treaty introduced the Early Warning Mechanism into the EU decision-making process. Under this mechanism, National Parliaments monitor the compliance of EU legislative proposals with the principle of subsidiarity by issuing yellow cards in cases of violation. It is argued that in doing so, they meet a collective action problem in form of an assurance problem, hence will only ineffectively exert their scrutiny rights. Despite these theoretical predictions, National Parliaments triggered the mechanism twice so far by issuing yellow cards on COM/2012/0130/'Monti II' and COM/2013/0534/'EPPO'. Thus, this thesis aims at analysing how National Parliaments managed to overcome the assurance problem in these cases. Conducting case studies based on theoretical assumptions derived from collective action theory, it is demonstrated that National Parliaments used to this end effective leadership and pre-play communication in the sense of inter-parliamentary cooperation in order to create certainty about the actions of other Parliaments and subsequently about the prospects of successful collective action. Applying the method of structured and focused comparison, four cautiously generalizable conclusions can be drawn about the importance of effective leadership and inter-parliamentary cooperation, the importance of effective information exchange between the political and the administrative level, the importance of early activity of Parliaments during the scrutiny period and the importance of the network of National Parliamentary Representatives in Brussels for overcoming the collective action problem.