National opposition parties within the inter-parliamentary conference on stability, economic coordination and governance in the EU

ABSTRACT

While the institutional dimension of inter-parliamentary cooperation has been the subject of intense research, much less is known about the involvement of partisan actors, and more specifically of members of opposition parties. This article aims to bridge this gap by looking at the composition of parliamentary delegations to the meetings of the inter-parliamentary conference on stability, economic coordination and governance in the EU (so-called ‘Article 13 Conference’, established by Art. 13 of the Fiscal Compact in 2012). It focuses on the involvement and attitude of opposition parties, in order to verify whether they take part to inter-parliamentary cooperation and with which approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Inter-parliamentary cooperation
• national parliaments
• economic governance
• opposition parties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article is part of the RECONNECT project (Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law) that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770142. It reflects only the authors’ view. The European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

2 This theorisation aims to highlight how each institution, both those of the European Union and those of each Member State, is called upon to deal with all the others simultaneously. This applies to the Executives, which are "fragmented", but also to the Parliaments, both at the European and at the national levels.

3 ParlGov (www.parlgov.org) is a data infrastructure for political science which contains information for all EU and most OECD democracies (37 countries). The database combines approximately 1,700 parties, 990 elections (9,300 results), and 1,600 cabinets (3,800 parties).

4 In the analysed period, the number of MEPs has ranged from 751 following the 2014 European elections to 705 after 31 January 2020.

5 He stated that the reaction to the 2014 crisis had led to a disaster, to an economic and social regression and that the 2015 elections had featured a rejection of the infamous measures imposed by the troika. The goal, according to him, is to dissolve the EMU and revoke the TSCG.

6 It was the first remote European Parliamentary Week ever organized.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luca Bartolucci

Luca Bartolucci is Lecturer in Public Law at the LUISS School of Government, Rome. He has a PhD in Theory of State from La Sapienza University, Rome. He published a monograph on The Sustainability of the Public Debt in the Constitution (Wolters Kluwer, 2020).

Nicola Lupo

Nicola Lupo is Full Professor of Public Law and Director of the Center for Parliamentary Studies at LUISS University, Rome. He has a PhD in Public Law from Florence University and held a Jean Monnet chair on “Understanding Representative Democracy in Europe”. He recently published, together with Marta Cartabia, “The Constitution of Italy. A Contextual Analysis” (Hart, 2022).