Comparing the intensity of scrutiny for ‘domestic’ and implementing bills: does transposition of EU law reduce political contestation in national parliaments?

ABSTRACT

Research on the role of national parliaments in European Union (EU) matters dominantly concentrates on ex ante scrutiny and mostly neglects that many parliaments are constitutionally obliged to play an important part in the implementation of EU law into domestic legal orders. The low interest is tied to an argument that even if national parliaments are involved in transposition, they only serve as constrained agents of the EU. This article tests this assumption and inquires whether there are differences between parliaments’ scrutiny of bills (laws) transposing EU impulses and ‘purely domestic’ bills. Analysis is based on quantitative data from the Czech Chamber of Deputies and the Slovak National Council. While the project remains essentially exploratory, results suggest that while the implementing bills are debated considerably less than the domestic bills, for the remaining included indicators the intensity of scrutiny for the former group of bills on average does not differ from the latter group. The findings might therefore challenge the thesis that that the implementation process is mere formality that consequently reduces political contestation in the legislatures.

KEY WORDS:

• Czech Republic
• Europeanization
• implementation of EU law
• legislative process
• national parliaments
• Slovakia

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions (Analysing Parliamentary Behaviour in European Union Affairs workshop) in Warsaw, April 2015. I am grateful for comments and suggestions provided by fellow participants. I received additional valuable advice from Thomas Winzen and two anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Robert Zbíral is senior lecturer at the Law Faculty of Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Notes

1. Although the discussed sources dealt primarily with ex ante scrutiny, there is no reason not to apply their findings to ex post scrutiny (implementation).

2. These indicators might be also viewed as dependent variables and are interchangeably labelled as such in the text.

3. Data on file with author.

4. LexRank is part of Czech/Slovak legal database ASPI.

5. The highest values do not exceed 0.35 (Pearson coefficient).

6. The difference of means is especially strong for Slovakia (t = 3.45**, df 211, effect size 0.23) but not for the Czech Republic (t =1,57, df 249, effect size 0.01).

7. There is a long way before the infringement procedure runs its course into the feared financial sanctions and a dominant majority of infringements never even reach the Court of Justice (European Commission 2014).

8. Compare the scores for SDKU-DS (Slovenská demokratická a kresťanská únia – Demokratická strana), SMK (Strana maďarskej koalície), and KDH (Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie) (Slovakia); and ČSSD- Social Democrats (Czech Republic) in 2010 Chapel Hill survey available at http://www.chesdata.eu/ (accessed July 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Grant Agency under grant no. 13-15422P.