A Resenha Shackleton

Meissner and Scholler

Based on original interview material, we assess these propositions in two crisis-ridden areas of EU decisionmaking: economic governance and the negotiation of trade agreements. We find that the EP extended its powers in both policies by applying a set of particular strategies, which include obstructing the decision-making process, acting as a first-mover and mobilizing the public. Finally, we reflect on the possible consequences of this self-empowerment for the EP’s legitimacy.

The EP increased its powers as regards both accountability and decision-making. In particular when it comes to venues outside the official fora of decision-making, the EP ‘forced’ the other actors to grant it more powers by unilaterally introducing new rules to its benefit (moving first). Other strategies successfully employed in both policies were obstructing the decision-making process through delaying (in economic governance) and sanctioning (in trade policy) as well as mobilizing public opinion. By contrast, we found strategies of arena linking as well as alliance building with single member states only in the area of economic governance.

To be sure, an increase in institutional rights does not automatically lead to more influence over policy outcomes. This argument has been made in particular with regard to the EP’s role in eurozone crisis management. First, it has been argued that the EP was not able to translate its newly gained powers into real authority on policy outcomes. Second, there are ‘negative’ cases in which the EP failed to acquire new rights. But the primary aim of this article is to show how the EP succeeded in increasing its powers as a pre-condition for any (future) influence over policy outcomes.

Finally, more participation rights for the EP and more control over executive actors provide opportunities for increased politicization at the EU level, doing justice to public contention of EU issues and representing citizens’ concerns in the decision-making process. Yet, by bargaining for institutional rights behind closed doors, the EP may be perceived as being more interested in empowering itself than in representing EU citizens. Moreover, dynamics of self-empowerment can face limits especially when the EP pursues conflicting goals: reaching particular policy outcomes, empowering itself, or shaping the institutional setting of a policy. How the EP reacts in such situations remains an important area of future research.

Shackleton - Transforming representative democracy in the EU? The role of the European Parliament

The author starts his discussion questioning if parliaments are structured to be leaders. He clarifies that, despite parliaments not being generally conceived of as leaders because of their lack of financial and bureaucratic resources necessary to guide and manage the direction of policy in the same way that executive bodies can; the European Parliament has played a pivotal leadership role in transforming the character of representative democracy at EU level.

Moreover, the position of the European Parliament is not the same as that of national parliaments. Although the European Parliament is no exception to the general rules: small bureaucracy, budget devoted to administrative expenditure and etc.; the EP has become a more significant actor in EU politics over the last thirty years. The difference lays on the difficulty to establish which institution leads in the EU.^[1] Even though all institutions defend their prerogatives and none is ready to acknowledge the leadership claims of others, according to Shackleton, the European Parliament has proved remarkably successful in influencing the nature of individual policies as well as in co-shaping the agenda of system development.

Therefore, one of the main arguments of the author is that the Parliament has always played and continues to play a pivotal leadership role in the determination of the character of representative democracy at the EU level. Shackleton recognises that, at first sight, such a claim may seem exaggerated, since the Lisbon Treaty does not give a preeminent position to the Parliament as a representative body, not being the privileged interlocutor between electors and governments that national parliaments are. Nevertheless, the author argues that the Parliament has been able to shape the debate about representation at EU level, enjoying remarkable success in persuading the member states to reinforce its role, particularly in the legislative arena with the development of the Ordinary Legislative Procedure.

In this sense, the gradual empowerment of the European Parliament has allowed this institution to establish an identity for itself that was separate from that of the executive bodies of the EU, including the Commission, and that enabled it to aspire to parity with the Council. For much of its history the EP argued for a representative system based on competition between institutions operating on the principle of a separation of powers. However, following the Lisbon Treaty and the 2014 European elections^[2], a rather different paradigm has been developed, namely, the prospect of a form of parliamentary government where executive power is channelled through the elected representatives of the people. The Parliament has thereby been at the centre of a transformative (rather than ‘transactional’) development in the structures of representation of the EU. And that is the aspect Shackleton will discuss further.

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In order to do so, he will first explain the process by which the Parliament acquired powers in the budgetary and legislative arena, establishing a trajectory which favoured the development of a separate representative institution. To be seen as a representative democratic organisation, the Parliament needed to establish its own identity, acting in the three classical areas occupied by parliaments: lawmaking, controlling the budget and appointing and supervising the executive. However, the EP has been shaped by the way in which the EU has developed and, as a result, it is the idea of a separation of powers that has dominated the way the European Parliament has evolved, which is primarily due to early decisions taken by the governments of the member states themselves in the 1960s and 1980s^[3].

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