The Lisbon Treaty grounds the EU in the principles of political equality and representative democracy. It also acknowledges the role national parliaments play in realizing these norms within the EU’s system of governance - the first time they have been mentioned in the main body of the TEU. This article analyses the normative and empirical connections between political equality and representative democracy at the domestic level, and the ways they are embodied in parliamentary elections between competing parties. It then assesses how far these links continue to operate in the domestic debate of EU affairs. We argue that in many respects they have been undermined by the integration process, which has reduced the capacity of national representative institutions to perform the tasks assigned them by the Treaty.
