National Parliaments in the EU: Towards Greater Legitimacy of European Affairs
The Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), in collaboration with the Centre for European Reform (CER), invites you to a discussion on the aims of addressing the legitimacy deficiency in the European Union.
After decades spent in the background, national parliaments are back at the heart of the EU reform debate. The long-running strategy of giving greater powers to the European Parliament does not appear to have improved the legitimacy of EU affairs let alone the quality of legislation. With the EU now facing almost existential challenges, national governments have begun a discussion about how to improve the power of national parliaments to collectively influence European policy.
But can national parliaments cooperate to block European legislation, let alone to constructively influence it? Will cooperation divert them from their prime task of holding their national government to account? And do MPs even want to bear responsibility for EU affairs?
Carl Schlyter, Chair of the EU Committee of the Swedish Parliament.
Agata Gostyńska, Research fellow at CER and author of the report "A ten-point plan to strengthen Westminster'soversight of EU policy", to be presented during the seminar.
Hans Hegeland, Ph.D. Committee Secretary in the Swedish Parliament.
Valentin Kreilinger, Associate Research Fellow to the Jacques Delors Institut, Berlin.
Göran von Sydow, Senior Researcher in Political Science at the Swedish Institute
for European Policy Studies, SIEPS.
The seminar will be moderated by Mark Rhinard, Senior Research Fellow and head of the Europe Program at UI.
Welcome!