Abstract
The European Semester became an essential part of the revised governance architecture of the Europe 2020 reform strategy for the Single European Market under the conditions of the global financial crisis and the emerging eurozone crisis a decade ago. The article examines to what extent the European Semester offers channels to establish <em>throughput legitimacy </em>by granting national parliaments the ability to effectively scrutinise executive decision-making in the annual policy cycle. Poland is chosen as the case study for parliamentary scrutiny of the EU’s system of multi-level governance in the East-Central European region. The analysis adopts a liberal intergovernmentalist two-level approach. On the domestic level it concentrates on the involvement of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, on the drafting of the Polish National Reform Plans for the annual Semester policy cycle between 2015 and 2020. The basis for the analysis are official transcripts from the plenary debates in the relevant committees, the European Affairs Committee and the Public Finance and the Economic Committee. The Polish case study illustrates that the European Semester represents a predominantly elite-driven process of policy coordination, which is strongly geared towards EU-level executive bargaining processes between national governments and the European Commission at the expense of domestic parliamentary scrutiny.
Highlights
This article concentrates on Poland as the case study for parliamentary input legitimacy in the East‐Central European (ECE) region in relation to the EU‐level European Semester annual coordinative policy cycle, which is integrated in the economic and social Europe 2020 reform strategy
The analysis of the involvement of parliamentary input in Poland illustrates the general problem of the pro‐ cess, which is heavily tilted towards executive bargain‐ ing processes between national governments and the European Commission, both on an individual bilateral level and collectively in the Council
In terms of real input, the process lacks depth and more extensive mechanisms for individual MPs to get involved. This reflects the fundamental problem with the European Semester, which lies in the fact that from the two‐level perspective the process is orientated towards bargaining on the second level, i.e., the supranational level between national governments and EU institutions, most of all the European Commission and the Council
Summary
This article concentrates on Poland as the case study for parliamentary input legitimacy in the East‐Central European (ECE) region in relation to the EU‐level European Semester annual coordinative policy cycle, which is integrated in the economic and social Europe 2020 reform strategy. National parliaments play a crucial role in ensuring the legitimacy of the EU policy process They pro‐ vide input legitimacy by acting as the main bodies, where the electoral choice of the sovereign is represented and where a government majority emerges which con‐ stitutes the basis for executive decision‐making. They play a crucial role in ensuring throughput legiti‐ macy by monitoring and influencing legislative processes. Parliamentary Scrutiny of the European Semester: A Two‐Level Approach towards Throughput Legitimacy
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