It has often been remarked that national parliaments, the great winners of the constitutional period that followed the French Revolution, have been the main losers of the European game of influence and power. National governments play an important role on the Union level because of their roles in the council of ministers and the European council, the national judiciary has gained new and far-reaching powers through the EU-mandate given them by the decisions of the Court of Justice, but the bodies representing the nations of Europe on a national level have been confronted by loss of influence, nowadays reaching the heart of parliamentary power, the power of the national purse. This loss of influence by national parliaments is even more remarkable when confronted with the central idea of democracy in most of the member states, which is that a sovereign people governs itself through its directly elected representatives
In the history of European integration, the idea has long been practiced that this loss of national parliamentary influence should be countered by increasing the powers of the European Parliament (EP). In recent years, however, this idea has been shelved and a two-pronged approach seems now to be taken: both national parliaments and the EP need strengthening on the Union level. In this paper, the problem of the relationship between the national parliaments and the EU is analyzed from the perspective of two national parliaments: the Dutch and the German. They have been on opposite sides of the scales, the Dutch parliament accepting its diminishing role, the German resisting it. The arguments used in both parliaments for this different positions will be compared to see which arguments have led to which position(s), thus shedding light on the different perspectives for the relationship between the European and national parliaments.
