The trend towards “differentiated integration” in the field of EU Economic Governance raises the question of whether this expanding field of EU activity ought to be subject to differentiated parliamentary representation: proposals have been made for new bodies in which only parliamentarians from certain member states (be they MPs and/or MEPs) would be permitted to take part, such as a “Committee for the Euro” within the European Parliament or a parliamentary assembly for the Eurozone. This article argues that these proposals greatly underestimate the difficulty of determining which states’ parliaments should be included or excluded in these bodies. In fact, non-Eurozone states vary significantly in their adherence to the elements of the economic governance regime – e.g. whether they are obliged to join the euro or have an opt-out, and their degree of commitment to the Fiscal Compact (whether they have signed/ ratified/ voluntarily submitted to the same strictures as Eurozone states); these states’ parliamentarians' right to participate in oversight bodies could be said to vary accordingly. Even parliamentarians from outside the EU have a stake, in particular representatives from the five EU candidate countries, the three EEA states, or from the nine states and territories outside the EU that use the euro as their currency. In addition, the strength of the claims to participate will vary according to which aspects of EU economic governance the new oversight body is supposed to oversee – the new system of budgetary surveillance, new financial authorities and mechanisms, the day-to-day governance of the euro. The knotty problem of which parliamentarians should be left out – the quandary of exclusion – is illustrated in this paper with reference to the most significant new institution in this field, the Interparliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance in the European Union.
