The role of National Parliaments in the European Union. Evidence given to the House of Lords

One of the most significant and debated problems within the European constitutional architecture concerns the so-called democratic deficit in its institutions, and in particular in the Council, the solution to which would be a democratic legitimation of the indirect type. Currently there are two-tier level of legitimation, together with the direct representation of the citizens of the Union within the European Parliament, which should ensure that the democratic principle is upheld thus giving legal force to the legislation produced by the European institutions. It is however evident that this is a "weak" solution and that it assigns to national Parliaments a merely negative role in the sense that it attributes to them a task of exercising mere "supervision", which is furthermore carried out a posteriori. In this matter the role of national Parliaments is becoming increasingly important in the sphere of EU law and in the name of a meaningful implementation of the democratic principle, the Treaties should be reformed in the direction of strengthening the role of national Parliaments.