Scholars have written a great deal about which functions national parliaments should perform in European Union (EU) governance. As ‘multi-arena players’ (Auel & Neuhold 2017), they are simultaneously to be scrutinizers of their own governments acting at the EU level, watchdogs of subsidiarity, participants in inter-parliamentary cooperation and communicators of EU affairs to their domestic constituencies. Ultimately, this bundle of functions is to enhance the democratic legitimacy of EU politics.
We also know quite a bit about the institutional powers national parliaments possess in EU affairs as well as how and why we observe certain parliamentary EU activities. But when classifying specific activities such as plenary debates or oral questions as furthering a particular parliamentary function, we assume a connection between activity and function without regard for the parliamentary actors’ motivations. Therefore, this paper takes the national parliamentarians’ (MPs) perspective to answer the question which parliamentary functions and activities national MPs prioritize in EU affairs. It draws on plenary debates on the Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty and the Eurozone crisis as well as data from 66 interviews with MPs from Austria, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. In an earlier study on COSAC and European Convention documents, Raunio (2011) has found a clear focus on government scrutiny, day-to-day EU decision making and changes in EU Treaties. This emphasis on national parliaments as routine scrutinizers may have shifted not least since the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty, but especially given the executive-led state of emergency since the Eurozone crisis with its dominant intergovernmental mode of decision-making.
