Legitimacy of the European Semester: National Parliaments to the Rescue?

The European Semester procedure is a key part of the major EMU reforms undertaken in response to the Eurozone crisis. It is an institutionalised standard and permanent instrument of the enhanced system of economic governance in the EU, which aims to ensure consistency among wide areas of economic policy in the EU. The procedure enables intensified cooperation of the Commission, national governments and the Council in planning national fiscal and structural policies and enhanced EU monitoring of their implementation. Such intensive and coordinated cooperation is important because of the high level of economic and financial integration among EU member states. However, the contemporary EU economic governance, embodied in the European Semester, is democratically problematic because it has enabled extension of supranational influence over national choices and decisions in core national policies (notably, national budgets) as never before. At the same time, this governance has not been accompanied by corresponding accountability and legitimation mechanisms to justify these policies to the public. The European Parliament as a device of legitimation of such supranational coordination has only limited powers in the European Semester procedure. In addition, the potential for a stronger inter-parliamentary scrutiny of the procedure is yet to be fully developed. Therefore, national parliaments are once again expected to ensure domestic ownership of the European Semester procedure and enhance procedure´s democratic legitimacy by their active involvement. Yet such tasks for national parliaments are challenging because there is a lack of specific European provisions for the participation of national parliaments in the procedure itself so the degree and the substance of their involvement depend on their national contexts and arrangements. In this regard, it is important to consider what can realistically be expected from national parliaments in the European Semester procedure. This paper investigates to what extent the involvement of national parliaments ensures parliamentary control of the government and scrutiny and justification of decisions taken within the European Semester framework as well as the parliamentary communication of policy choices to the public. This is done by analysing parliamentary scrutiny practices concerning main European Semester-related policy documents at the committee(s) level and in plenary over several consecutive cycles of the procedure. Drawing from the neo-institutional rational choice approach this paper aims to explain more comprehensively actual parliamentary European Semester-related practices by uncovering general patterns of parliamentary involvement in the procedure and investigating factors triggering an active engagement.