構成国国会の審査制度によるEC立法過程の民主的統制

Abstract

As the EC integration progresses, more EC laws including laws originated from EC laws are applied in the Member States. This has diminished the roles of Member States' parliaments as legislative and controlling authorities.The so-called ‘democratic deficit’ is the problem of degree of incorporation of the representative democracy into the EC system. In this article, the national parliaments' scrutiny systems are focused as ways to control the EC legislative process and to reduce the ‘democratic deficit.’ The national parliaments are ‘closer to the citizen’ and they play important roles in the representative democracy in the EC, complementary to the European Parliament's role.After the Single European Act entered into force in 1987, the number of EC laws increased dramatically. The national parliaments have amended internal procedures and established scrutiny systems to control their own governments' positions in the Council. In the 1990s, to make their scrutiny more effective, the French Senate, the British House of Commons, the Danish Folketing and the Finnish Eduskunta have established representative offices in the building of the European Parliament in Brussels. This enhanced relationships among European and national parliaments.First of all, the scrutiny systems of these four parliaments are studied as examples. Problems are that the governments do not always provide the parliaments all the information, that they do not provide it promptly, that the EC legislative proposals are sometimes adopted by the Council before their scrutiny is exhausted and that governments do not always take into account the parliaments' views (except in Denmark and Finland). For the purpose of the scrutiny, it is important that the parliaments can express their views before the EC legislative proposals under scrutiny are adopted in the Council. In this regard, ‘scrutiny reserve’ has been introduced. It can be said that the continued interaction between the governments and the parliaments through the scrutiny systems has contributed to make the scrutiny systems more effective and the governments to take into more account of the parliaments' views.At the EC/EU level, the protocol on the role of national parliaments in the European Union annexed to the Amsterdam Treaty provides measures, although limited, to enhance national parliaments' ability to express their views on EC legislation. The European Parliament encourages the reinforcement of the national parliaments' scrutiny in its resolution A4-0179/97. To make the democratic control of the EC legislative process more effective, the European and national parliaments can jointly influence the EC legislative process by taking similar attitudes in the areas where their interests converge.Through their scrutiny systems, the national parliaments can be said to have incorporated to a certain extent the representative democracy into the EC legislative process.