National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis
National Parliaments and the Eurozone Crisis

A New Dimension of the Democratic Deficit?

Summary/Abstract: The Eurozone crisis has had a profound impact on representative democracy in Europe. On the one hand, the European Parliament has been largely marginalised in the area of the European Union’s economic governance; on the other hand, core competences of national parliaments have also been challenged by the executive-driven reforms. The crisis has also led to a differentiation in the position and strength of national legislatures and caused an unprecedented asymmetry between parliaments of the Eurozone. The main dividing line is the ‘status’ of debtor or creditor states. The biggest winner in securing its powers seems to be the German Bundestag, which owes its position to a series of judgements of the German Federal Constitutional Court. A growing asymmetry between national parliaments brings a new dimension of the democratic deficit: the strengthening of the Bundestag’s oversight competences is not a ‘win-win situation’, which contributes to the strengthening of parliamentary democracy in Europe because it brings serious ‘side-effects’: it undermines the position and competences of debtor states’ parliaments. This creates tensions between democracies with respect to two core components of democracy: congruence and accountability, and thus poses new challenges for democratic legitimacy at national and European levels. The increasing differentiation and asymmetry between parliaments create the effect of domination and deepen the democratic deficit, not only at the European level but also in some member states. The question whether and how these tensions can be alleviated remains open. Recently, one of the most frequently discussed ideas to address the democratic deficit problem has been the one of a strengthened interparliamentary cooperation which, however, seems to bring as many hopes as challenges.

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