How can Parliaments contribute to the Legitimacy of the European Semester?

Abstract

This article develops a standard for evaluating how parliaments can contribute to the legitimacy of the European semester. It then uses that standard to identify where national parliaments may be able to oversee the semester through their relationships to their own governments and where that solution may, conversely, be insufficient. The article uses that analysis to raise four questions. Firstly, what powers over the semester should be exericed by some parliament somewhere? Secondly, how should any parliamentary participation in the semester be distributed across European, national and even sub-national parliaments? Thirdly, how far should parliaments co-operate in their responses to the semester? Fourthly, how uniform across parliaments should participation in the semester be? The final version of this research has been published in Parliamentary Affairs. © 2017 Oxford University Press