EU treaty will not empower national parliaments, says UK report

A new report by British parliamentarians says that the stalled Lisbon treaty will do little to improve national parliaments’ powers.

The criticism focuses on a protocol to the Lisbon treaty, which encourages the role of national parliaments in EU activities and spells out rules on subsidiarity, the principle governing whether decisions should be taken at EU or national level.

The report, drawn up by the UK’s House of Commons European scrutiny committee, concludes, “We doubt whether the treaty’s new subsidiarity provisions about the role of national parliaments would make much practical difference to the influence presently enjoyed by the UK parliament.

“We doubt the significance of the ‘greater opportunities’ for national parliaments to be involved in any meaningful manner in the workings of the EU.”

The cross-party report, ‘Subsidiarity, national parliaments and the Lisbon treaty’, was published on Monday.

The treaty, which has been ratified by the majority of EU member states, is currently stalled following its rejection by Irish voters in a referendum in the summer.

The Lisbon treaty gives national parliaments the option to submit a draft legislative proposal for review if they judge it non-compliant with the principle of subsidiarity – what the Commons report calls “yellow and orange card procedures”.

However, says the report, whether or not the draft is put up for review is a decision made by the EU itself. “If national parliaments trigger the yellow or orange card procedures, the decision on whether a proposal is compatible with subsidiarity will continue to rest with the EU institutions.”

It also notes that, “There may in future be proposals where it might be difficult to deny that collective action by the EU would be the most effective way to achieve a treaty objective, but where a national parliament would strenuously object to the proposal because it infringes national sovereignty.

“If a proposal were objectionable on grounds of sovereignty alone, neither the yellow nor the orange card procedures would be available to national parliaments.”

The report quotes ALDE deputy Andrew Duff, who told the committee, “There is a danger that, in assessing the treaty, national parliaments become obsessed by the early warning mechanism on subsidiarity.

“It was understood by those of us involved in its drafting and then redrafting that the mechanism, although a necessary addition to the system of governance of the EU, was not really intended to be used,” said Duff, who was involved in drafting the treaty’s subsidiarity clause.

He added, “It is…more a dignified part of the European constitutional settlement than an efficient one.”

UK Socialist MEP Richard Corbett, a constitutional expert, also told the committee, “In practice, I do not think that the yellow and orange card mechanisms will be extensively used.”

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