Bicameral or Tricameral? National Parliaments and Representative Democracy in the European Union

• Autores: Ian Cooper
• Localización: Revue d'integration europeenne= Journal of european integration, ISSN 0703-6337, Vol. 35, Nº 5, 2013, págs. 531-546
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The Treaty of Lisbon defines the European Parliament and the Council as the principal institutional actors of ‘representative democracy’ in the EU, thus endorsing an essentially ‘bicameral’ model of EU democracy. In this model, national parliaments focus their scrutiny on their governments’ conduct of EU affairs, but are not themselves EU-level actors. However, the Treaty of Lisbon also creates an Early Warning Mechanism which empowers national parliaments to intervene collectively in the EU’s legislative process. This suggests a new, ‘tricameral’ model in which national parliaments constitute the third chamber in a reconfigured representative system for the EU. This reconfiguration moves the EU away from traditional models of representative democracy and more towards a complex ‘demoi-cracy,’as it now has three bodies to represent the citizens, governments and peoples of Europe.