Representation in the European State of Emergency: Parliaments against Governments?

Abstract

‘If governments allow themselves to be entirely bound to the decisions of their parliament, without protecting their own freedom to act, a break up of Europe would be a more probable outcome than deeper integration.’ The statement of the Italian Prime Minister and head of the so-called ‘governo tecnico words have to be seperated ’ is one remarkable instance for colliding visions of representation in EU member states affected by the financial crisis. It exposes an old problem of representation: that is, representation of the whole versus representation of the parts. National parliaments are called to endorse the European decisions of their governments and simultaneously to sell the sacrifices to their constituencies. This development is conducive to clashes between parliaments and governments. The collision occurs between governments representing the Euro and Europe and national parliaments representing national voters’ interests.

Nevertheless in the period of analysis (2010–2012) the governments generally succeeded in commanding the majority needed to pass relevant legislation, whereby most intriguingly majorities were repeatedly formed by government and opposition parties. We are interested in the analysis of how this came about, how MPs argued over and negotiated the outcome. The hypothesis is twofold: First, we expect that despite reservations the majority consents because entrapped in a European discourse, building on arguments of how the rescue mechanisms are in the best European as well as national interests. Second, budget competence being the ‘crown jewel’ of parliaments these are anxious to keep control of decisions taken at the European level and have to be satisfied through side-payments or constitutional concessions strengthening their control function. To test our hypothesis we analysed parliamentary debates and negotiations of national parliaments in three member states: Germany, Italy and Austria.

Key Words:

• Democratic representation
• national parliaments
• financial crisis
• European monetary policy
• comparative analysis

Acknowledgement

We thank Marina Kolb for her support in data analysis. A special thanks goes to Sandra Kröger and Richard Bellamy for their highly valuable critique of first versions of this article and to the anonymous reviewer.

Notes

1. ‘Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.’ (Edmund Burke, speech to the electors in Bristol, 3 November 1774, Works I: 446–48.)

2. See Protocol No. 1 ‘On the Role of National Parliaments in the European Union’ and Protocol No. 2 ‘On the Application of Subsidiarity and Proportionality’; see Puntscher-Riekmann 2010. The consequences of the protocols being dealt with by Ian Cooper and Carina Sprungk in this issue are not an object of our paper.

3. The German supreme judge Udo di Fabio thus qualified the core competence of the Bundestag (Der Spiegel, 5 September 2012)

4. The analysis is conceived as a pilot study to be expanded to other cases in a larger project.

5. When referring to the aspect of claim-making in the context of representation, we do this against the background of the contribution of Lord and Pollak in this issue. Building on the theories of Saward, representation is defined as constant tripartite dialogue between the representatives, their representative claims and an audience of potentially represented. In our case we see, how the object of representation is constructed in a parliamentary discourse, but also how parliamentarians construct themselves as representatives of either specific national or European interests (the whole and the parts). And as Lord and Pollak show in more detail in their paper, MPs compete with their representative claims with others, be they executives (ECOFIN (Economic and Financial Affairs Council), European Council, ‘Merkozy’, Commission) or experts (ECB, IMF, economic advisers).

6. By referring to the EU as ‘sedated giant’, Peter Mair (2007) aims at stressing the fact, that the de-politicisation of the Union is a deliberate act of the major mainstream political parties in Europe, to avoid political competition and strong opposition on European issues. This downgrades the value of the traditional democratic process, even on the national level.

7. Three decisions of the Constitutional Court are especially worth mentioning: the Maastricht decision (1993), the Lisbon-decision (2009) and the preliminary ESM-decision (2012). All three decision highlight that the Court is increasingly called upon to decide on questions concerning conflicts of sovereignty between the EU and the national level.

8. Whether this will change as a result of the 2013 national elections is unclear at the time of writing.