Democratic Legitimacy and the EU Polycrisis. Explaining National Parliaments' Scrutiny of European Council Negotiations
Rik de Ruiter
Synopsis "Democratic Legitimacy and the EU Polycrisis. Explaining National Parliaments' Scrutiny of European Council Negotiations"
Europe is facing financial, social, health, geopolitical, and environmental issues. This book examines how national parliaments respond to crises and link citizens' concerns to high-level decision-making. Focusing on Italy and the Netherlands, it explores how politicians and media responded to key European Council meetings addressing these crises.
The EU is in the middle of a polycrisis, involving financial, social, health, geopolitical, and environmental concerns. Democratic Legitimacy and the EU Polycrisis examines the role of national parliaments in times of polycrisis, focusing on their function as a crucial link between domestic audiences on the one hand and the European Council—a secluded, high-level intergovernmental bargaining arena—on the other. The democratic oversight exercised by national parliaments and its effect on the public sphere are essential to consider when assessing whether representative democracy and EU decision-making can function at the same time during periods in which multiple crises are mutually reinforcing.
This study investigates the attention devoted in plenary debates and newspapers in two member states—Italy and the Netherlands—to meetings at which heads of state and government set priorities for addressing the following crises: the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, climate change, the negotiations on the Multiannual Financial Framework in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This book sheds light on the extent to which the politicisation of EU affairs in the national public sphere, driven by the polycrisis, can reduce the deparliamentarisation of national representative democracy and increase the Europeanisation of national public spheres.
Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of MPs' interventions and media coverage, we learn which country was more severely affected by the polycrisis, as well as the effects this has had on the link between the secluded high-level intergovernmental bargaining in the European Council, the domestic political arena, and the public sphere.
This book highlights how the opportunities to exploit urgency for political purposes are smaller in the parliament of the country most affected by the polycrisis: emergencies do not always suspend democratic politics.
