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national legislatures, while the European Parliament is
insufficiently legitimate to redress the power shift. In the previous
sections, we have seen that the Treaty of Lisbon makes the EP
operate more like the Council (with more deals struck by small
circles, and fewer issues subject to public, plenary debates) and the
Council operates more like the Commission (by gaining more
autonomy from domestic legislatures). The current section will
examine the one institution that has the potential to redress the
shifting balance.
A. Subsidiarity
(A) Logical Evaluation
One of the challenges faced by the EP is that of the “no
European
demos
” or “no European public” problem. Since this
problem is inherent to the Union and may be insurmountable,
national parliaments retain the position as the ultimate institution
that can make democracy work right in Europe. If national
parliaments are passive with respect to engaging in European
affairs, by giving national parliaments a treaty-based role in formal
decision-making, the Union may nonetheless improve its own
democratic legitimacy via national parliaments. In other words, if
the job of national parliaments is to legislate and to hold national
executive power accountable, then, when the national executive
power becomes active and engaged at the European level, national
parliaments should follow suit. By staying put “within their own
neatly nationally fenced off compartments,” national parliaments
have fallen far behind in the performance of their oversight of
policy making with regard to European affairs and allowed
executives to develop a robust, interwoven, and complex
administrative network that operates over the horizons of national
parliaments (Curtin, 2009: 134-135).
The Treaty of Lisbon empowers national parliaments to
ensure compliance of EU policies with the principle of subsidiarity.