SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS - ENGLISH VERSION
SYMPOSIUM OPENING
MR JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAPIN,
CHAIRMAN OF THE EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
OF THE FRENCH SENATE
Senators, Colleagues,
Professors and Researchers,
Ladies and Gentlemen, present here or connected from afar,
I am delighted to welcome you to the Senate this morning. I am doing so on behalf of President Larcher, who has entrusted me with the task, as an emergency has unfortunately prevented him from opening this symposium as planned. But the question that brings us together today, "What place for the national parliaments in the European edifice?", is so important to him that he is nevertheless keen to take part in this event: he will therefore be joining us around noon, and I am very grateful to him in advance for the consideration he is showing for our work.
What place for national parliaments in the European edifice? This is a legitimate question, given the sheer number of European institutions. Is there any need to add another player in a game that is already so complex and difficult for our fellow citizens to grasp? We need to ask this question now: firstly, because the conference on the future of Europe, which opened last May, invites us to reflect on the functioning of the Union; and secondly, because we are on the eve of the six-month period when France will find itself at the heart of the European machinery, in its turn presiding over the Council of the European Union.
The European Affairs committee, which I have the honour of chairing, has just consulted local elected representatives online about their perception of the European Union and their vision of its future. Nearly 2,000 of them took part in this consultation. And what do they have to say? Of course, they associate the European Union with positive values, but they see it primarily as a distant, bureaucratic machine that does not pay enough attention to the territories in all their diversity.
It is precisely for this reason that national parliaments have their place: it is not a question of adding complexity to complexity, or institutions to institutions. Allow me to "spoil" this conference, as you would a thriller film or television series, by giving you the answer to today's question: what we expect of national parliaments is that they should bring democracy back to the bureaucracy and thus, ultimately, legitimacy to the construction of Europe. Their contribution to the smooth running of the European Union has been progressively recognised and enshrined in the Treaty of Lisbon.
But what is the actual contribution of the national parliaments? This is a fascinating question because it is far from settled. The French Senate has been working on it for a long time, and many of you are looking for the answer. And I would like to thank each and every one of you, here in the Senate or from different parts of Europe, for agreeing to share your thoughts with us today.
It seemed to us today that our questions could be organised around four axes, which will give rise to four sessions of our symposium.
The first is the relationship between each Parliament and its own Government, dealing with the European policy it pursues and, in particular, the positions it defends in the Council. This is a fundamental political issue because it operates at two levels:
- firstly, at national level, it is vital to ensure that entire areas of government action do not escape the scrutiny of national parliaments. After all, the transfer of sovereignty from the State to the Union can also be seen as a transfer of powers from Parliament to the Government, since in the European areas it is the Government that will be able to decide at the Council of the European Union - albeit collectively - on matters that were previously subject to a vote by Parliament;
- secondly, at the European level, the aim is to fill a gap: the challenge is to ensure democratic control of the Council, through the governments that make it up. The national parliaments are irreplaceable in fulfilling this role: by each scrutinising the European action of its government, together they democratise the way the Council operates.
The second area is the institutional role that national parliaments must play in the European edifice. They have been entrusted with the task of monitoring compliance with the principle of subsidiarity; then the Commission has opened up to them the wider possibility of direct political dialogue with itself on all aspects of its action. This is undoubtedly progress, but it is not enough. It leaves the national parliaments still too much on the sidelines of the European decision-making process: they must not simply transpose European directives, but be genuinely involved in the process of drafting European legislation.
The third area for reflection is the future of interparliamentary cooperation, which could constitute a new collective form of democratic control over European decision-making.
Finally, we will devote the fourth and last session of our symposium to a tension that is resurfacing today between national parliaments, as constituent powers, and the construction of Europe. It is a tension that is in the very nature of the Union, "united in diversity" to quote its motto; but it is taking on a new acuteness today with the debates that are flourishing in several Member States around the primacy of European law and respect for their constitutional identity.
I will not dwell any further on these last two sessions, as President Larcher will certainly return to these subjects, as he will be speaking before we address them.