The Lisbon Treaty has significantly broadened the powers of the European Parliament (EP), which now legislates on an equal footing with the European Council in a wide range of areas. Yet European citizens continue to perceive the EP as distant and to have a very little knowledge of its impact on their lives. Unsurprisingly, the gap still separating EU institutions from their citizens has raised concerns about the health of representative democracy at EU level. This paper seeks to provide a theoretical contribution to the debate on the EU democratic and legitimacy deficit by investigating how national parties may help the EP gaining accountability vis-à-vis European citizens.
The underlying hypothesis is that national parties may play a key role in boosting EU legitimacy. Although strongly criticised, they continue to be a fundamental reference point for citizens, playing a key role in making representative democracy work within domestic borders. At the same time, the frequency and relevance of their involvement in the European legislative arena seem to increase as the EP gains new powers (e.g. Messmer 2003; Raunio 2007). This raises the following questions: given the still strong tie between citizens and national parties, if the latter display further interest in EP affairs, what could be inferred with respect to the quality of EU democracy? How and to what extent can national parties contribute to the improvement of EU representative democracy?
To address these questions, this work develops an innovative theoretical framework. This draws on fields of literature which have never been analysed together before, such as EP legislative studies and the normative debate on the so-called demoicratic paradigm. In so doing, this work lays the theoretical basis for a broader empirical project aimed at exploring, in a comparative perspective, national parties’ behaviour in the EP.
