Abstract
It is commonly argued that direct elections will affect the institutional balance in the Community in a number of significant ways. This argument derives from a belief that the direct election of the European Parliament per se will be sufficient justification for the accretion of its powers. The ways in which the Parliament’s powers are expected to be increased are seen by some as necessitating formal amendments to the Treaty of Rome, and by others as demanding little more than a fuller exploitation of its current rules of procedure and existing practices. MEPs themselves have contended that the Parliament’s influence can be expected to increase even in default of formal Treaty amendments (to which some national governments are believed to be opposed) by virtue of the enhanced status and direct rather than derivative legitimacy that direct elections are expected to afford the Parliament. Irrespective of formal changes to the distribution of powers among the Community’s institutions, pressures to augment the Parliament’s role in the decision-making and legislative processes can be expected to grow. If the Parliament both seeks and acquires greater influence in the formulation of EC policy, and if practices are developed to increase its participation in the pre-decisional stages of the legislative process (that is, during the phase of consultation and bargaining preceding the final submission of Commission proposals to the Council of Ministers for approval), then a gradual shift in the EC’s legislative power base will be effected.
… si le fédéralisme présuppose toujours l’existence de collectivités publiques dotées d’une certaine autonomie d’action, son originalité consiste également en ce qu’il cherche à faire participer ces dernières à l’exercice des pouvoirs conférés aux organes supérieurs communs. Or sur ce plan-là aussi, les Communautés font une place importante à la préoccupation fédéraliste.
François Cardis, Fédéralisme et Intégration Européenne (1964) p. 225
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Notes
A. Spinelli, The European Adventure (London: Charles Knight, 1972) p. 173.
A. Spinelli, The Eurocrats (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966) p. 162.
Developed in W. N. Hogan, Representative Government and European Integration (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1967).
S. Henig, ‘New Institutions for European Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, XII (1973) 129–37;
S. Henig, ‘The Institutional Structure of the European Communities’, Journal of Common Market Studies, XII (1974) 373–409.
See, for example, R. Mayne, The Institutions of the European Community (London: PEP/Chatham House, 1968);
R. Pryce, The Political Future of the European Community (London: Marshbank/Federal Trust, 1962) pp. 58–65.
R. R. Bowie, ‘The Process of Federating Europe’, in A. W. MacMahon, Federalism: Mature and Emergent (New York: Doubleday, 1955) p. 508.
See Pryce, The Political Future of the European Community; also M. Steed, The European Parliament: The Significance of Direct Election’, Government and Opposition, VI (1971) 462–76.
K. C. Wheare, Federal Government (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946) p. 11.
See D. Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics (London: Martin Robertson, 1975);
A. J. R. Groom and P. Taylor, Functionalism (London: Univ. of London Press, 1975).
In Etzioni’s sense of the word: see A. Etzioni, Political Unification (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965).
For a discussion of this see D. J. Elazar, ‘Fiscal Questions and Political Answers in Intergovernmental Finance’, Public Administration Review, XXXII (1972) 471–8.
For a discussion of this see D. Coombes, Politics and Bureaucracy in the European Community (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970) pp. 86–100.
For details see É. Noël, ‘The Committee of Permanent Representatives’, Journal of Common Market Studies, V (1967) 219–51.
V. Herman, Parliaments of the World: A Reference Compendium (London: Macmillan, 1976) p. 4.
G. Smith, Politics in Western Europe (London: Heinemann, 1972) p. 328;
E. Machek, Die Osterreichische Bundesverfassung (Vienna: Cura Verlag, 1965) p. 40;
P. M. Williams, The French Parliament: 1958–1967 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968) p. 29; and Herman, Parliaments of the World, pp. 585–94.
For a series of comparative studies see D. Coombes et al., The Power of the Purse: The Role of European Parliaments in Budgetary Decisions (London: Allen & Unwin/PEP, 1976).
See G. Smith, ‘West Germany and the Politics of Centrality’, Government and Opposition, XI (1976) 393.
See J. Lodge, ‘Citizens and the EEC: The Role of the European Parliament’, The Parliamentarian, LVIII (1977) 176–81;
J. Lodge and V. Herman, ‘Citizenship, Direct Elections and the European Parliament’, Res Publica, XIX (1977) 579–605
G. Zellentin, ‘The Function and Form of the Opposition in the European Parliament’, Government and Opposition, II (1967) 418.
J. Lodge, The Reform of the European Parliament’, Political Science, XXV (1973) 58–78;
Vedel Report. Report of the Working Party Examining the Problem of Enlargement of the Powers of the European Parliament (Brussels, 1972);
A. Shlaim, ‘The Vedel Report and the Reform of the European Parliament’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXVII (1974) 159–70.
For details see Sir Barnett Cocks, The European Parliament (London: HMSO, 1973).
For a discussion of this see H. Vredeling, ‘The Common Market of Political Parties’, Government and Opposition, VI (1971) 455.
Discussed in J. Lodge, ‘Parliamentary Reform in the EEC’, The Parliamentarian, LV (1974) 254–5.
For details of this see D. Strasser, La Nouvelle Procédure Budgétaire des Communautés Européennes et son Application a l’établissement du Budget pour l’exercise 1975’, Revue du Marché Commun, no. 182 (1975) 79–87;
C.-D. Ehlermann, Applying the New Budgetary Procedure for the First Time (Article 203 of the EEC Treaty)’, Common Market Law Review, XII (1975) 325–43.
H. Thomas, Europe: The Radical Challenge (London: Quartet, 1973) p. 24.
Coombes et al., The Power of the Purse, p. 370; see also E. L. Normanton, The Audit and Accountability of Governments (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1965).
See A. Grosser, ‘The Evolution of European Parliaments’, Daedalus, XCIII (1964) 153–78.
J. Lodge, The European Policy of the SPD (Beverly Hills & London: Sage, 1976) pp. 66–7.
K. Meyer, ‘Integration and its Institutions’, Aussenpolitik, XXIII (1972) 61–82.
Noël, op. cit.; see also E. Noël and H. Etienne, ‘The Permanent Representatives Committee and the “Deepening” of the Communities’, Government and Opposition, VI (1971) 422–47.
D. Norrenberg, ‘Un modèle institutionnel déficient: la communauté européenne’, Res Publica, XVIII (1976) 210.
Explained in footnote 45 in H. Wallace, National Governments and the European Communities (London: PEP/Chatham House, 1973) p. 59.
For details of this see J. Lodge, ‘Towards the European Political Community: EEC Summits and European Integration’, Orbis, XIX (1975) 626–51.
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© 1978 Valentine Herman and Juliet Lodge
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Herman, V., Lodge, J. (1978). The Case for a Bicameral Parliament. In: The European Parliament and the European Community. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15892-8_10
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