Abstract
ABSTRACTThe paper analyses the scrutiny activities of three different types of institutionalised form of interparliamentary cooperation with participation of subnational parliaments: the Conference of European Legislative Assemblies; the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference; and the Interregional Parliamentary Council of the Grande Région. For the purpose of analysis, the analytical parameters of parliamentary functions are modified and applied to the forms of institutionalised interparliamentary cooperation. It is shown that the exertion of scrutiny activities increases in relation to the age and institutionalisation of an interparliamentary cooperation. Ex ante control, which may consist of as little as demands, develops more easily than ex post control. Moreover, the exercise of the scrutiny function becomes more difficult when the level(s) that populate(s) the interparliamentary cooperation is/are not congruent with the level(s) that populate(s) the executive body of the respective international organisation. Interparliamentary cooperation of subnational parliaments struggles to scrutinise an organisation in which national executives play a major role.
Highlights
The Treaty of Lisbon expanded the scope of activity for parliamentary scrutiny of executive governance in the EU
With CALRE, the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) and the CPI-IPR we focus on specific cases of transnational-multilateral corporative actors, which are composed of representatives from subnational parliaments and relate to the EU in general, or to a specific form of cooperation beyond or below
The paper shows that – next to the representation function which is conceived as a basic function of interparliamentary cooperation – parliamentary scrutiny can be exerted by INCOs and increases path-dependently over time
Summary
Practice (Benz, 2011; Crum & Fossum, 2009; Eppler, 2011, 2015; Fossum & Crum, 2012, 2013; Maurer, 1996, 2002, 2009, 2012). To address our second research question – how to explain varying patterns of scrutiny activities of institutionalised forms of interparliamentary cooperation with participation of subnational parliaments – we selected three cases: CALRE, the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) and the Interregional Parliamentary Council of the Grande Région (CPI-IPR). INCOs exercise scrutiny vis-à-vis a supranational, international or transnational organisation or cooperation in which the executive branch plays an important role (see above) They build a pool to share information (as a prerequisite of scrutiny) between the national or subnational parliaments which is a means to enable parliaments to scrutinise the activities of ‘their’ executive in supra-, trans- or international organisations. The three cases under review show an increasing gradient: CALRE, the interparliamentary cooperation with the lowest scrutiny activity, has standing rules of procedure It is not equipped with an institutionalised secretariat or a specific budget. We take a snapshot of the situation in January 2016, referring to the congruence of levels and a crosssection of years 14–19 of the existence as a reference for the control activities (Table 5)
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