Europe 2020 - Partial delay after Bundesrat complaint

After Germany's second chamber, the Bundesrat, complained on Tuesday that the schedule for the Europe 2020 strategy was against the Lisbon Treaty rules, European Council President van Rompuy now has postponed parts of the decision.

According to EurActiv, those parts of the 2020 plan dealing with education will not be decided at the European Council next week. This is necessary because the German federal states represented in the second chamber are responsible for education according to the German constitution.

It's exactly this kind of strange compromise I have expected: How can you pass the 2020 strategy partially next week and agree to the educational parts later this year? Isn't this meant to be an integrated strategy that can be agreed to as a whole or not?

And if the Bundesrat could complain that it didn't have enough time to consider the plan, how could all the other national parliaments? Did they receive the documents earlier than the Bundesrat? This would be odd. Or don't they care for their new rights, having eight weeks to consider European legislation? This would be bad.

What this affair shows is that the Lisbon Treaty has actually triggered changes and might have strengthened not just the European Parliament but also national legislatures - if they are conscious of their rights and if the take them seriously.

What is an EU legislative act?

The debate about what the Lisbon Treaty actually means continues.

Now the conference of EU committees of member states' parliaments (COSAC) has raised the following question:

What is a "legislative acts" when it comes to the involvement of national and regional parliaments of EU member states?

This involvement is foreseen in Protocol N° 2 (on the application of the principles of subsidiarity) to the Lisbon Treaty. But if the EU will apply a very narrow interpretation of "legislative acts", the national legislatures might be left aside in quite a number of relevant matters.

This is why COSAC expects an answer on its question from European Council President van Rompuy until the end of May.

It's still amazing that these questions haven't been raised and answered before the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty - what were the parliaments doing when they agreed to the text...?

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Follow-up: The legal status of procedures leading to international agreements

Involvement of national parliaments under Lisbon: Barroso letter

A week ago, Barroso has sent out a letter explaining how the national parliaments will be involved under the Lisbon Treaty.

To remember: Under the Protocol 2 of the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments have gained explicit scrutiny rights in EU law-making. Parliaments have to receive documents in time and may react within 8 weeks if they see their rights unduly limited by the EU level, including the possibility to refuse legislation:

Where reasoned opinions on a draft legislative act's non-compliance with the principle of subsidiarity represent at least one third of all the votes [every country has two votes; in bicameral systems these are shared; JF] allocated to the national Parliaments [...] the draft must be reviewed.

The Barroso letter now explains how the procedure will look like in practice:

• National Parliaments will receive Commission documents the day they are sent out to the EP and the Council.

• Draft legislation will always be accompanied with a letter ("lettre de saisine") that will point to the subsidy control rights of the national parliaments (NPs) and the procedure according to Protocol 2 of the Lisbon Treaty.

• At the end of the week, the Commission sends out a list of all documents sent in that week. NPs have three working days to complain if they missed one, which, if true, may prolong the 8 week deadline for the parliaments concerned.

• August (as summer recess month) will not be counted for the 8 week deadline.

• NPs are asked to distinguish clearly between substantive comments and comments regarding subsidiarity rights when they comment on legislation.

• The blocking threshold of one third will be effective even when the reasons for rejecting a proposal by different NPs will be different.

• The opinions of NPs will be published on the Commission website.

• If a proposal is rejected by the NPs, the Commission will decide whether to amend or to withdraw the legislation.

• Pending proposals from pre-Lisbon times are not covered by the procedure.

It will be really interesting to see how this works in practice, but the procedure as proposed looks very promising, and I am looking forward seeing the dynamics this may bring in the future.

The Europeanisation of law-making in Germany: Overrated!

I have just read a scientific article from September 2008 titled

"Das Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates und der Mythos einer 80-Prozent-Europäisierung in Deutschland"

('Governing beyond the nation state and the myth of an 80% Europeanisation in Germany') by Thomas König and Lars Mäder.

In this article, the authors try to analyse thoroughly how many laws in Germany have been passed based on European impulses. The figures they use are mainly based on the public database of the Bundestag (the German parliament) and supplemented with data form the EUR-LEX database.

What they find is that

• from 1976-2005, 24% of all German laws have had a European impulse, with the 2002-2005 legislative period being the peak with 35,7%;

• from 1980-2005, 24% of all German laws with financial implications had an EU impulse, with the 2002-2005 legislative period being the peak with 35,8%;

• from 1976-2005, 14,6% of all German laws with key importance were initiated by the EU, with the 2002-2005 period being the peak at 33,3%.
  

In certain policy areas like justice or agriculture, the figures can go above the 50% - but if the work was correct, figures above 70% in particular regarding the total amount of laws do not seem realistic under a quantitative and even under a restricted qualitative perspective (i.e. based on the the concept of "key importance").

This also confirms doubts raised lately by Open Europe about these figures flying around during the European Parliament election campaign.