Who, How and Why is Framing Europe in Slovakian Parliament?

National parliaments gained quite impressive abilities to speak into the European politics mainly with Lisbon treaty. The Slovak parliament is an example of a mandating system in EU affairs. Its European Affairs Committee (EAC) is considered to be a “mini parliament” which performs on legislation, opinions and other tasks coming from the Brussels to Bratislava. In the field of modelling of parliamentary scrutiny on EU affairs it is a governmental watchdog. Raunio (2009) proposed to fill academic gap by theory driven analyses based on “actual behaviour” rather than explaining the use of given rights and their application in the European affairs. With respect to that, this paper focuses on the performance of the EAC itself, its members and a head of the commission regarding fulfilling the role of governmental watchdog. As well as parliamentary body, that, as the primary one, deals with the EU affairs and which should play the role of gatekeepers on framing EU within a political system. The goal is to confront real appearance of actors within EAC, according to March and Olsen´s logic of appropriateness (2011). The timeline of research covers the latest period of parliamentary activity (2016-2020) via content analysis of its EAC performance. The paper aims to elucidate factors influencing individual MPs attitudes as well as the EAC as an entity towards European affairs in the political system of the Slovak republic and vice versa the EU institutions. And thus, points out whether the Slovak parliament uses parliamentary tools of Lisbon treaty.