1. law, govt and politics
2. government
3. parliament

ISSN 0080–6757 Doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9477.2009.00242.x
© 2009 The Author(s)
Journal compilation © 2009 Nordic Political Science Association
How to Measure the Europeanisation of a
National Legislature?
Tapio Raunio* and Matti Wiberg
While there is no shortage of research on national parliaments and European integration,
empirical studies on the impact of EU on domestic legislatures are lacking. This article contributes to the literature by discussing the challenges involved in measuring the Europeanisation of national parliaments and through suggesting several hypotheses and indicators –
EU-related national laws, the use of control instruments (confidence votes and parliamentary
questions) in EU matters, and the share of committee, plenary and party group meeting time
spent on European matters – that can be used in subsequent comparative research. Evidence
from Finland shows the differentiated impact of Europe: while the share of domestic laws
related to EU is smaller than often argued, particularly committees are burdened to a much
larger extent by European matters.
Introduction
The impact of European integration on national parliaments first received
serious political and academic attention in the mid-1990s in connection with
debates on how to cure the alleged democratic deficit of the European
Union (EU). Both members of parliament (MPs) and scholars became
more interested in whether and how national parliaments controlled their
governments in European matters, particularly as in a broader range of
policy domains domestic laws were being replaced by supranational EU
laws. The first years of the new millennium have seen the completion of
several research projects on the role of national parliaments in European
integration (e.g., Maurer & Wessels 2001; Auel & Benz 2005b; Holzhacker &
Albæk 2007; O’Brennan & Raunio 2007; Tans et al. 2007; Barrett 2008). This
scholarship has significantly improved our understanding of influence of
national legislatures in the EU’s political system.
Despite this proliferation of research, we lack empirical studies on the
extent to which national parliaments have in fact been Europeanised – that
is, how much and in what ways the EU has impacted national parliaments.1
Most of the existing literature has focused on institutional adaptation by
* Tapio Raunio, Department of Political Science & International Relations, 33014 University
of Tampere, Finland. E-mail: tapio.raunio@uta.fi
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domestic legislatures, describing the various scrutiny arrangements and
assessing their effectiveness. Importantly, studies on the Europeanisation of
national parliaments must extend beyond European Affairs Committees
(EAC). Through almost exclusively focusing on these EU committees, previous research has largely neglected other parliamentary organs such as
committees, party groups and plenaries. Existing publications have at most
mentioned whether specialised committees or the plenary are formally
involved in the handling of EU issues. Hence this article is the first publication to cover all main aspects of parliamentary work. Furthermore, we
lack agreement on how to measure or operationalise the Europeanisation
of national parliaments. As a result, this case study on the Finnish
Eduskunta contributes to the literature through suggesting a set of indicators and hypotheses that can be used in future comparative research. Our
main research question is how and to what extent does the EU impact on
the work of the Eduskunta? The central argument is that the effect of the
EU on national parliaments is multifaceted, depending primarily on which
parliamentary body (committees, party groups, plenary) we examine and on
the incentives of political parties.
In the next section we discuss the theoretical and methodological challenges involved in measuring the effect of the EU on national parliaments.
Having arrived at a set of indicators, we put forward several hypotheses that
are tested in the empirical section. The period under analysis covers mainly
Finland’s EU membership from 1995 to 2008. The dataset consists of parliamentary records, interviews and surveys of both MPs and parliamentary
civil servants.2 In the final section we summarise our results and discuss
possible variation between individual domestic legislatures.
The Multifaceted Impact of Europe
Any study of how European integration impacts on domestic institutions
must start with a definition of ‘Europeanisation’. After all, the selection of
empirical indicators should be driven by the choice of the theoretical
concept. In this article we are primarily interested in the ‘top-down’ dimension of Europeanisation and do not focus on the issue of whether national
parliaments – either indirectly via their government or through direct contacts with EU institutions – can influence European-level policy making.
Hence we stick to the original definition by Ladrech (1994, 69), according to
which Europeanisation is ‘an incremental process re-orienting the direction
and shape of politics to the degree that [EU] political and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policymaking’.3 This definition is useful as it contains the fundamental question
we are interested in – the extent to which national parliaments have
‘re-oriented’ their activities on account of European integration.
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Another option would be to employ a more demanding definition. For
example, according to an often-utilised definition, Europeanisation is ‘processes of (a) construction, (b) diffusion, and (c) institutionalisation of formal
and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, “ways of doing
things”, and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the making of EU public policy and politics and then incorporated
in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures, and public
policies’ (Radaelli 2003, 30). Radaelli’s definition thus shares many elements with the original definition by Ladrech, but also goes deeper by
emphasising more explicitly cultural, attitudinal or informal aspects of
domestic politics. Using this definition, one could examine whether engagement in the EU’s policy process alters the political cultures or working
patterns of domestic legislatures. For example, to what extent has there
occurred homogenisation or convergence of working patterns of domestic
legislatures? And does such potential convergence vary between the different parliamentary arenas – plenary, committees, party groups – and between
different policy sectors?
However, while such questions would undeniably be highly interesting
for future research, utilising such an all-encompassing definition of Europeanisation might be very demanding in terms of both data and the reliability of findings. While there are excellent case studies on how Europe
affects the role conceptions or attitudes of MPs (Rozenberg 2005), it would
be methodologically challenging, if not outright impossible, to execute reliable comparative studies on the ‘cultural’ or ‘informal’ influence of Europe.
Longitudinal survey data does make it possible to identify any potential
EU-induced changes (Wessels 2005), but one can also argue that such
survey data is too narrow for analysing the multiple ways in which European integration can affect the mindsets of national parliamentarians.
Whatever the theoretical concept employed, any realistic study on the
Europeanisation of national parliaments must pay sufficient attention to the
incentives of political parties. After all, European parliamentary democracy
is effectively party democracy. Government formation is based on bargaining between political parties, with the opposition parties trying to unseat the
cabinet or increase their support in the run-up to the next election. Parties
are also responsible for setting the parliamentary rules of procedure: the
agenda and powers of committees and the plenary, as well as the rights of
individual members and party groups, are all decided by political parties.
Considering these factors, it is essential to understand the incentives of
political parties when analysing how European matters are processed in
national legislatures.
Having settled on our theoretical concept, we shall now discuss and
explain our choice of empirical indicators. It is essential to underline that
the choice of indicators is primarily determined by the requirements of
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comparative research, with the main criterion being that the indicators must
be applicable across the national parliaments of EU Member States. They
also reflect the fact that we are interested in the ‘top-down’ dimension of
Europeanisation and in how the EU impacts on the work of the parliaments, not on the public policies approved by the legislatures.
Share of EU-related Laws
We start by an indicator that is important in terms of understanding how
much EU impacts on the work of parliaments (and on domestic polities
more broadly) – the share of national EU-related laws. It is also relevant in
terms of its relationship with the other indicators – that is, is there a correlation between the share of EU-related laws and the share of committee or
party group meeting time taken up European matters? Membership in the
EU imposes severe constraints on the policy autonomy of national parliaments.Apart from EU directives that require national transposition, domestic legislation can also be indirectly shaped or influenced by European
integration, for example in the form of policy diffusion and peer pressure
under the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) and other ‘soft law’ coordination efforts (Duina & Raunio 2007). However, it must simultaneously
be emphasised that the famous ‘80 percent’ prediction made by the Commission President Jacques Delors in the late 1980s about the share of
legislation that would flow from Brussels has proven to be misplaced.4
Previous research has shown this share to be much lower, even when
including domestic laws that were in some way ‘inspired’ by the EU. For
example, Töller (2008) demonstrates that while the share of EU-inspired
legislation enacted by the German Bundestag has more than doubled since
the mid-1980s, in the 15th election period (2002–2005) 39 percent of the laws
were influenced by a ‘European impulse’. König and Mäder (2008) also
show that the share of German legislation with an ‘EU impulse’ has
increased over time, with 24 percent of the laws enacted between 1976 and
2005 having such a European connection. According to Hegeland (2005)
only 6 percent of the legislation adopted by the Swedish Riksdag between
1995 and 2004 contained a reference to an EU law. Johannesson (2005) in
turn showed that between 1998 and 2003 20 percent of the Riksdag’s legislation was related to binding EU legislation, with an additional 10 percent in
some way related to the Union. The most likely explanation for this relatively low share of EU-related domestic laws is that most of the legislation
adopted by national parliaments deals with policy sectors where the EU has
no formal competence to enact its own laws (see also Page 1998; Bovens &
Yesilkagit 2004; Blom-Hansen & Christensen 2004).
One must also be aware of the measurement problems involved in
attempting to conduct comparative research on the share of ‘EU-related’
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legislation (see Töller 2007, 2008). First, production of laws differs between
EU Member States, with some parliaments approving considerably less laws
than others. In some EU countries the adoption of legislation may be
delegated more extensively to the government, which issues decrees in place
of laws processed by parliaments. Second, much of EU legislation consists of
regulations that are directly binding and hence do not require parliamentary approval. Perhaps the most significant problem is measuring the indirect influence of European integration. Apart from pressure and policy
diffusion resulting from OMC and other forms of intergovernmental policy
coordination, governments may import policies from other EU countries or
follow the EU’s recommendations without this being explicitly acknowledged in the text of the initiative. This applies particularly to policy sectors
– most notably foreign and defence policies – where the outputs are normally not laws, but other types of decisions.
Given that the consecutive Treaty amendments enacted since the late
1980s have basically all extended the policy reach of the EU, and in line with
previous research discussed above, we hypothesise that the share of
EU-related laws has increased over time. As Finland joined the EU in 1995,
just after the completion of the EU’s law-intensive internal market, we
expect this increase to be relatively small.
Committee Time
Parliamentary decision making is based on interaction between party groups
and committees. Committees are where most of the legislative work is carried
out, with the government’s (or EU’s) initiatives normally examined by the
specialised committee(s) before the matter is debated and voted upon in the
plenary. Research has also shown that extensive use of committees facilitates
stronger government scrutiny and that legislatures have invested resources in
committee work in order to reduce the informational advantage of the
government (Strøm et al. 2003; Norton 1998). Thus legislatures with strong
committees, such as the Nordic parliaments, are normally ranked among the
most powerful in Europe (Bergman & Strøm Forthcoming).
There are at least three potential indicators for measuring how the EU
impacts on parliamentary committees. The first would be to examine how
often committees produce reports on European matters. The main problem
with this is that while in some EU countries committees must report on
European issues to the plenary or to the EAC, in most parliaments there are
no similar requirements. In Finland the specialised committee(s) must,
according to the constitution, report on EU matters in writing to the Grand
Committee, the EAC of the Eduskunta (Jääskinen 2000; Raunio 2007a,
2007b). However, given that there is no similar arrangement throughout the
national parliaments of the Union, the volume of committee reports cannot
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be used as an indicator in comparative research. A second option would be
to measure the share of EU-related agenda items in committee meetings.
The problem with this approach is that it does not tell us anything about the
actual time spent on various matters under consideration.
As a result, the indicator we suggest is the share of committee meeting
time used for EU matters. This indicator can easily be utilised in comparative research, either through examining committee records that specify the
times for the start and finish of debates on various items or through surveys
of committee clerks. The advantage of this indicator is that it makes it
possible to analyse the ‘weight’ of EU matters vis-à-vis domestic agenda
items. The hypothesis for this article is that EU matters occupy a more
prominent role on the agendas of committees than of party group meetings or
of plenary sessions. The explanation is that in the Eduskunta the specialised
committees must report on EU matters, and hence they need to process
such matters in their meetings. Second, we expect to find considerable
variation between the committees, depending on the division of competencies
between the Union and the Member States in the respective policy areas.
Hence European affairs should appear more frequently on the agendas of
committees whose jurisdiction covers domains where the EU is either the
main legislator (e.g., agriculture and environment policies) or is otherwise
an influential actor (e.g., foreign or economic policies). In future comparative research, the hypothesis could be formulated so that the share of
committee time spent on EU matters would vary between Member States
depending on the extent to which committees are involved in European
affairs. After all, while in some legislatures the role of the specialised committees has by now become institutionalised, in most parliaments EU
matters are effectively centralised to the EAC.
Plenary Time
According to the hypotheses formulated above, European matters are
debated more frequently in the committees than in the plenary. Indeed,
much of previous literature has lamented the lack of plenary debates on
Europe, arguing that such debates might generate more interest in integration among citizens. While the ability of plenary debates to reduce the gap
between the citizens and EU can be doubted, existing research clearly
shows the limited role of the plenary in European affairs (e.g., Bergman
et al. 2003, 175).
This similarity between EU countries is explained by two factors. First, the
establishment of EACs reduces the use of plenary as EACs coordinate
parliamentary work in EU matters and are often authorised to speak on
behalf of the whole parliament in these issues. Second, this strategy also
serves the interests of political parties. Regardless of the data used, there is
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a consistent body of work showing that national parties across the EU
are ideologically less cohesive on integration than on traditional socioeconomic issues that dominate domestic political discourse (e.g., Hix 1999;
Thomassen & Schmitt 1999; Marks & Steenbergen 2004). Moreover, according to European Election Study (EES) data, parties are considerably more
supportive of integration than their voters (Mattila & Raunio 2006).
Avoiding public debates on European integration is thus a logical
response from vote-seeking political parties. Governing parties probably
want to monitor the government in EU matters behind closed doors in the
EAC and in the party groups without public criticism that might damage the
reputation of the cabinet (Auel 2007).5 Considering that the main opposition parties are on average no more coherent over EU than governing
parties and/or have similar preferences on integration, they are unlikely to
demand more plenary debates about Europe. Indeed, main parties in
several EU countries, especially in the Nordic region, continue to ‘depoliticise’ European integration through cross-party cooperation behind closed
doors in the EAC with the aim of manufacturing consensus in national
integration policy (Bergman & Damgaard 2000).
Party Group Meeting Time
As parliamentary decision making is based on interaction between party
groups and committees, party groups discuss in their meetings the same
topics that appear on the agendas of the committees and the plenary.
European matters are probably debated in party group meetings before
they feature on the agendas of the EACs. Given the difficulties parties face
over European integration, it is hypothesised that the share of party group
meeting time focused on EU matters is lower than the share of committee
time. Party size is a potential factor that needs to be taken into consideration. We expect smaller parties to spend less time on European matters than
larger party groups. Variation is explained here by policy influence: as the
possibilities of small parties to influence national EU policy, or indeed
bargaining at the European level, is marginal, they do not have incentives to
invest scarce resources in European issues. Table 1 shows the distribution of
votes in Eduskunta elections since the early 1990s.
The Share of Parliamentary Questions and Confidence Votes
Our final indicator focuses on the activities of individual representatives
and groups of MPs. Individual deputies have usually broadly similar rights
throughout European parliaments: they can propose new laws or that
certain topics be debated in the plenary or in committees, but these instruments are strongly constrained by party groups whose prior approval is
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Table 1. Distribution of Votes in Eduskunta Elections since the Early 1990s and the Position
of the Parties and Their Supporters on EU Membership in the 1994 Referendum (%)
Party
Centre Party
Social Democratic Party
National Coalition
Left Alliance
Green League
Swedish People’s Party
Christian Democrats
Rural Party1
Young Finns2
True Finns
Others
TOTAL
Party line in the 1994
referendum and
the share of party
supporters voting in
favour of membership3
Yes (36)
Yes (75)
Yes (89)
No decision (24)
No decision (55)
Yes (85)
No (10)
No (20)
Yes
1991
1995
1999
2003
2007
24.8
22.1
19.3
10.1
6.8
5.5
3.1
4.8
19.8
28.3
17.9
11.2
6.5
5.1
3.0
1.3
2.8
22.4
22.9
21.0
10.9
7.3
5.1
4.2
24.7
24.5
18.6
9.9
8.0
4.6
5.3
23.1
21.4
22.3
8.8
8.5
4.6
4.9
1.0
1.0
4.2
100.0
1.6
2.8
100.0
4.1
1.7
100.0
3.5
100.0
4.1
100.0
Notes: 1The Rural Party was disbanded after the 1995 elections. The True Finns, established
that same year, can be considered its successor. 2The Young Finns was established in 1994. The
party failed to gain seats in the 1999 elections and was subsequently disbanded. 3The Left
Alliance and the Green League did not adopt official positions prior to the referendum.
Sources: Statistics Finland; Paloheimo (2000, 58).
usually required for their successful use. However, parliamentary questions
are different as they are normally a tool individual MPs can use rather freely
for their own purposes. Parliamentary questions are multifunctional, and
MPs ask questions for several reasons. Among the most important are
asking for information, committing the government to making a public
formal statement and pressing it for action, defending constituency interests
and informing the policy makers of problems with which they might be
unfamiliar.The attractiveness of parliamentary questions is enhanced by the
fact that MPs can practically raise any issue they want. Parliamentary questions are used in every EU national legislature, but there is variation
between the parliaments regarding both the types of questions used and the
procedural details concerning the submission and answering of questions
(Wiberg 1995; Strøm et al. 2003).
The parliament, and specifically the opposition, can also put forward a
motion of no confidence, the procedural rules of which vary between national
legislatures (Strøm et al. 2003). Confidence votes must normally be put
forward by entire party group(s) or by a specified number of MPs.We expect
to find that confidence votes are seldom used in connection with European
matters. This hypothesis is based on three factors. First, national EU policy is
in most countries not a very salient issue in the minds of voters, and hence the
opposition would not benefit that much by resorting to that instrument.
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Second, the opposition would then be also forced to publicly defend its own
policies – something that may not be in its interest for reasons explained
above. And third, were the opposition to attack the government’s European
policy in such a public way, the prime minister might blame the opposition for
‘unpatriotic’ behaviour that undermines the success of the government (and
the ‘national interest’) in subsequent EU negotiations (Benz 2004, 881; Auel
& Benz 2005a, 379). It is also probable that the share of parliamentary
questions on EU matters is low. This expectation is based on two factors:
information on European matters is often available faster from other sources
(direct contacts with ministries or with the European level), and as EU is of
low salience to most citizens,asking questions on EU matters is not important
in terms of credit-claiming or re-election.
The indicators introduced above were all chosen with comparative
research in mind; each of them can be applied to all or nearly all national
parliaments in a functionally equivalent manner. They are also indicators
that cover the main aspects of parliamentary work (lawmaking, constituency representation, control of the government) and the main forums (committees, party groups, plenaries) inside European parliaments. Next we shall
test our hypotheses in the context of the Eduskunta.
Empirical Analysis
Share of EU-related Laws
The first indicator is the share of EU-related laws (Figure 1 and Table 2).
Between 1992 and 2007 the Eduskunta produced 9,210 laws; 987 (11 percent)
of these contained an explicit reference to the EU.6 We acknowledge that this
low share may be partially explained by our strict operationalisation requiring such explicit references to the EU. However, our findings are in line with
previous research from other EU countries and offer further proof of the low
share of domestic laws that are influenced by European integration. The
results are also partly in line with our hypothesis about the increase of
EU-related laws. Whereas the share of these remained around 10 percent
until 2003, since 2004 over 15 percent of the laws approved by the Eduskunta
have contained references to the EU. The peak was in 2004 when 25 percent
of the laws were related to the EU. It is noteworthy that our measure in fact
overestimates the impact of the EU as it covers not only direct references to
EU laws in the strict legal sense, but also includes all references to all types of
regulations that have stemmed from the European Community, the European Economic Community or have been published in the Official Journal.
Hence our measure even includes references to soft law declarations and
other non-binding EU documents.
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Figure 1. Share of Laws Containing a Reference to the EU, 1992–2007 (%).
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
07
05
04
03
02
06
20
20
20
20
20
01
20
99
98
97
96
00
20
20
19
19
19
94
93
95
19
19
19
19
19
92
0
Table 2. The Legal Output of the Eduskunta and the Share of EU-related Laws, 1992–2007
Year
Laws
EU-related laws
EU-related laws (%)
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
Total
646
670
564
790
539
464
472
595
453
590
546
589
619
521
497
655
9,210
7
70
68
43
44
48
49
40
37
25
52
58
154
83
92
117
987
1.1
10.5
12.1
5.4
8.2
10.3
10.4
6.7
8.2
4.2
9.5
9.9
24.9
15.9
18.5
17.9
10.7
Sources: Wiberg (2004, 2006) and authors’ own calculations.
Committee Time
As the specialised committees must, according to the constitution, report on
EU matters to the Grand Committee, we expected the share of committee
time spent on European matters to be higher than the share of plenary and
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Table 3. Committee Time Spent on European Matters (%)
Committee
Administration
Agriculture and Forestry
Commerce
Constitutional Law
Defence
Education and Culture
Employment and Equality
Environment
Finance
Foreign Affairs
Future
Legal Affairs
Social Affairs and Health
Transport and Communications
2004
10–20
50
50
33–50
10
15–20
70
almost 50*
33
10*
10–15
20*
40
2008
40–50
30–40
60
5–10
25–30
25–30
50–70
15
less than 5
40
40
Note: *Interviews with committee clerks.
Sources: 2004: Eduskunta (2005, 73); 2008: survey of committee clerks.
party group meeting time. Table 3 shows the share of committee time taken
up by European matters for the two years for which we have data: 2004 and
2008. The entries in Table 3 are based on responses by the main committee
clerks responsible for administering the agendas of the committee meetings.
As a result, they are the best-placed persons to estimate the time spent on
EU issues. The question asked was the same in both 2004 and 2008: ‘Please
estimate how much of the meeting time of your committee is taken up by
EU matters (%).’ The Grand Committee is excluded from the analysis as it
focuses exclusively on European matters. Also the Audit Committee is left
out as its jurisdiction is limited to overseeing the management of government finances and compliance with the national budget.
While we do not have data on all the committees for both years, we can
still draw two interesting conclusions. First, the share of committee time
spent on EU issues is considerably higher than the share of domestic
EU-related laws. Indeed, the Eduskunta (2005, 14) itself has estimated that
nearly half of all items processed by it are EU matters.That same report also
noticed that the workload of committees, measured by the number of
agenda items, had roughly doubled as a result of EU membership. For
example, in 2003 the specialised committees (excluding the Grand Committee) processed 314 EU matters, 119 of which resulted in a report. That same
year the number of domestic items handled by committees was 244
(Eduskunta 2005, 15).
As expected, there is considerable variation between the committees, with
this variation primarily driven by the allocation of powers between the
national and European levels. Committees on Education and Culture and
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Future were least burdened by EU matters, while in the Environment,
Commerce, and Agriculture and Forestry Committees European questions
comprised half or more of the meeting time. Basically all respondents
emphasised the difficulties involved in giving exact or even rough estimates
as national issues often have a European dimension. Many of the committees (e.g., the Finance Committee) also utilise sections where EU matters
appear more frequently than in actual committee meetings. The variation
shown in Table 3 is also displayed in the reports produced by the committees to the Grand Committee. From 1995 to 2007 the specialised committees
issued on average 168 written opinions per year on EU matters, with particularly the Finance, Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, Environment,
Administration, and Transport and Communications committees producing
opinions on EU matters.
There are also interesting changes between 2004 and 2008, with some
committees spending less time on EU matters in 2008 and others considerably more. In general, the respondents pointed out that the influence of
Europe has been increasing over the years, with particularly the Defence,
Foreign Affairs, Administration, and Agriculture and Forestry committees
feeling more the effect of EU in their work. Also, the years under study
differed as the Intergovernmental Conference was under way during the
first half of 2004 and that year saw also the enlargement with ten new
countries joining the Union. However, 2008 was a much quieter year, with
no similar major European processes demanding the attention of national
MPs. Indeed, the respondents emphasised that share of committee time
spent on European matters depends to a large extent on what is on the
agendas of EU institutions.
Plenary Time
The Eduskunta is a committee-based institution, but it has attempted to
make plenary debates a more central aspect of its work (Nousiainen 2006,
293–4, 313–5). In European affairs, the plenary can become involved both
before and after decisions are taken at the European level. The Speaker’s
Council can decide that proposals for EU decisions be debated in the
plenary, but in such cases the chamber is not entitled to make formal
decisions. The plenary stage is also required when the implementation of
directives requires legislation. The prime minister must provide either the
plenary or the EAC information on European Council meetings both
before and after the summits. The same applies to Treaty amendments,
which require the Eduskunta’s approval.
However, plenary involvement in European matters has so far been very
limited. While limitations make it impossible to present longitudinal data,
our interviews with Eduskunta officials responsible for the agendas of the
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plenaries indicate that European questions feature rarely. Routine EU
matters, such as the implementation of directives, are only very seldom
debated on the floor. More far-reaching political decisions such as Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the EU’s multi-annual budgetary
frameworks, Treaty amendments and, notably, the development of EU
foreign and security policy have inspired longer plenary debates. For
example, both the Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe and the
Lisbon Treaty were each debated for approximately 13–14 hours.
Announcements by the prime minister have also dealt with European
matters, with seven such debates organised since 1999.7 The Eduskunta
(2005, 18, 40–1) has paid attention to the lack of plenary debates, recommending, for example, that such debates could be held in connection with
European Council meetings or about the Commission’s annual legislative
programmes, or that specific question-times be held on European matters.
As discussed in the previous two sections, the main explanation for the
brevity of plenary debates is the role accorded to the Grand Committee,
which coordinates parliamentary work on EU issues and speaks on behalf
of the Eduskunta in such matters. This also serves the interests of Finnish
parties.According to EES survey data, Finland had in 2004 one of the lowest
levels of party-voter congruence in integration matters, with only Great
Britain, Hungary and Luxembourg recording bigger differences (Mattila &
Raunio 2006). As European matters produce disagreement within and
among parties, public debates on the floor might damage the parties by
highlighting these internal cleavages.
Party Group Meeting Time
Turning to the share of party groups’ meeting time taken up by European
affairs, Table 4 reports findings for the same two years as in the case of
committees (2004 and 2008). The entries in Table 4 are based on responses
Table 4. The Share of Party Group Meeting Time Spent on European Matters (%)
Party
2004
2008
Centre Party
Social Democratic Party
National Coalition
Left Alliance
Green League
Swedish People’s Party
Christian Democrats
True Finns
20
15
5
10
15–20
8
10–20
2–5
(less than) 1
7
5–10
5–10
20
Sources: Surveys of party group officials.
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by party group secretaries responsible for managing the work and agendas
of party group meetings. The question asked was the same in both 2004 and
2008: ‘Please estimate how much of the meeting time of your party group is
taken up by EU matters (%).’ As in the case of committees, the respondents
emphasised both that the time spent on European matters varies depending
on what is on the agenda at the European level and the difficulties involved
in isolating EU matters from other agenda items. In fact, the non-responses
in Table 4 are explained by respondents carefully explaining how their
groups process EU issues and then stating that even arriving at rough
estimates is basically impossible. The larger party groups have established
specific EU working groups or sections, and this also impacts on the time
spent on EU affairs by the entire party group.
The limited role of the plenary and the findings reported in Table 4 clearly
confirm our hypothesis about committees spending more time on EU
matters than the full chamber or the party groups. As for party size, the lack
of data makes it difficult to provide any definitive answers but the interviews
did indicate that larger party groups (Centre, National Coalition, Social
Democrats) discuss EU matters more than smaller parties. In addition, we
have data from 2000 when the parties’ European or international secretaries were asked how much of their time national-level party organs annually
spend on EU matters. The response categories (in percentages) were less
than 10, 10–25, 25–50, 50–75 and 75 or more. European issues played a more
important role in the work of parliamentary groups than in other national
party organs: five parties replied 10–25 percent and only one less than 10
percent (Raunio 2000, 51).
It is also evident that the interest displayed by senior MPs or party leaders
is crucial: if they are interested in EU affairs, then such matters receive more
attention in the party groups. At any rate, EU matters seem to really be the
preserve of select few individuals within the groups. It is also worth asking
whether the time (at most 20 percent; Table 4) dedicated to European
affairs is sufficient for effective intra-party scrutiny or policy formulation.
Recent comparative research on the Europeanisation of national parties
has cast doubts on the effectiveness of such monitoring by party groups, with
evidence from six EU countries indicating that party leaderships largely
escape any such control from their own MPs (Poguntke et al. 2007). This
suggests that there may be ‘an additional dimension of the democratic
deficit, one that is inside political parties’ (Ladrech 2007, 953).
Share of Parliamentary Questions and Confidence Votes
Our final indicator focuses on parliamentary questions and confidence
votes. Interpellations have in recent decades become the standard form of a
confidence vote.Although an individual MP can initiate interpellations, they
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are usually put forward by opposition party groups. A minimum of twenty
signatures (10 percent of MPs) is needed for an interpellation to be presented to the government or an individual minister. The number of interpellations has increased steadily (Raunio & Wiberg 2008, 594), and their
main objective is to raise the profile of the opposition and perhaps also to
stimulate debate on topical issues (Nousiainen 2006, 311–2). The role of
parliamentary questions has also become more important over time
(Wiberg 1994). Finnish MPs can table both written and oral questions, with
the latter in the form of a televised monthly question time, during which
MPs can spontaneously put questions to the ministers on topics of their own
choice. While the impact of questions is hard to measure, their steady
increase shows that members find them worthwhile (Raunio & Wiberg
2008, 594).
Between 1995 and 2007 three out of 46 interpellations (7 percent) focused
on European affairs, with these interpellations tabled in 1998, 2003 and
2006. Two of them dealt with the EU’s agricultural policy and its impact on
Finland. A total of 467 out of 14,113 written questions (3 percent) were on
EU matters. As for oral questions, the share was somewhat higher: 8 percent
(209 out of 2,663 questions). These results are in line with our hypotheses
about parliamentary questions and confidence votes being used only seldom
in connection with European policy.8
Discussion
The purpose of this article has been twofold: to suggest indicators for
measuring the Europeanisation of national parliaments and to test these
indicators through a case study of the Finnish Eduskunta. We acknowledge
that our indicators do not capture all dimensions of the potential impact of
Europe on national legislatures. In this article we have been primarily
interested in the ‘top-down’ dimension of Europeanisation and as a result
our indicators have focused on the extent to which Europe penetrates the
agendas of parliamentary organs, the use of control instruments and
national lawmaking. As we have argued, these indicators can be applied to
all national parliaments, and they cover both the main aspects of parliamentary work and the main forums inside European parliaments.
Our analysis has three important lessons for future research. First, it has
shown how the impact of Europe varies inside the legislature, with parliamentary committees most burdened by European affairs in the Eduskunta.
This finding probably results from the constitutional obligation of the committees to report on EU matters, and hence the situation is likely to be
different in most other national parliaments. The extent to which EU
matters are centralised to the EACs may thus be a key variable in explaining how Europe impacts on domestic legislatures. In legislatures where
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European matters are mainly isolated to the EAC, the other committees
should deal more infrequently with EU questions.
Second, we showed how the plenary performs a marginal role in European matters. Considering that this finding is explained by two factors not
specific to Finland – the EAC coordinating parliamentary work in European
questions and speaking on behalf of the full chamber in such matters, and
the strategic incentives of political parties – we expect the results to be
largely similar across the EU. The only parties that probably would like to
have debates about Europe are those that are more in tune with their
electorate over Europe and/or are internally cohesive about integration.
These parties are normally either populist parties or located at the extremes
of the left-right dimension (radical right or left parties), that can, for
example, use such debates to criticise the government for not defending the
national interests well enough in EU negotiations (De Wilde 2008). Given
that they are often relatively small parties in their respective political
systems, they may even not have enough influence over the parliamentary
agenda to force such debates to be held.
However, perhaps the most important result of this article concerns the
methodological difficulties involved in separating EU affairs from other
matters handled by national parliaments. What actually constitutes an EU
issue? While certain questions such as Treaty amendments, enlargements or
EU budget can be categorised rather easily as European matters, more
typical are cases where EU and domestic spheres become so intertwined
that ‘isolating’ the EU dimension is very challenging. This applies particularly to policy-related questions (e.g., agriculture, economy, environment),
regardless of whether the matter is of European or national origin. Not only
does an increasing share of matters formally decided at the national level
have a European dimension, but also debates on EU laws or Europeanlevel processes can be dominated by domestic issues. Considering the interdependence of EU and national agendas, it is probable that the kinds of
problems identified in this article will only become more serious in the
future. Hence these methodological concerns should be taken into account
in future research.
NOTES
1.
2.
For reviews of literature on national parliaments and European integration, see Goetz
and Meyer-Sahling (2008) and Raunio (Forthcoming).
The interview and survey data is from 2004 and 2008. The data for 2004 consists of 22
face-to-face interviews with committee clerks and the secretaries of party groups. We
are grateful to research assistant Mari Männistö for help with the interviews. The 2008
data comes from a survey of committee and party group secretaries, and from interviews with other Eduskunta officials. In addition, we have used other data sources from
our previous research on the Eduskunta and the interview data collected by the Centre
for Parliamentary Studies at the University of Turku.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
There are several competing or alternative definitions of ‘Europeanisation’. See the
volumes edited by Graziano and Vink (2007), Bulmer and Lequesne (2005) and Featherstone and Radaelli (2003).
‘My impression by and large – and apologies to those whose pride in the keen interest
taken by their national parliaments in European affairs might be offended – is that
there is an unawareness in many national parliaments of the quiet revolution that is
taken place, as a result of which 80% at least of economic, financial and perhaps social
legislation will be flowing from the Community by 1993’ (Debates of the European
Parliament, 15 June 1988, pp. 156–7).
As of 2008, 10 of the 27 EACs met behind closed doors (in the case of bicameral
parliaments, this refers to EACs of the lower houses or to joint committees of the two
chambers). In addition, most EACs that meet in public can hold sessions behind closed
doors, with such restrictive practices normally used in connection with more sensitive
EU matters.
All laws were taken from the electronic database of Finnish legal acts (www.finlex.fi)
and were coded as EU-related only when they contained an explicit reference to at
least one of the following: the European Community (EY), European Economic Community (ETY) or Official Journal (EYVL). This was operationalised by searching
semi-automatically for EU legal terms (EY, ETY, EYVL) in the legal texts proper in
their entirety.
The topics of these debates were the Convention (14 May 2003; duration 3 hrs 50 min),
the IGC (18 December 2003; 1 hr), Common Agricultural Policy (16 June 2004; 2 hrs
50 min), European Council meeting (22 June 2004; 2 hrs), Northern Dimension and
topical EU matters (8 June 2005; 2 hrs 50 min), objectives for the Finnish EU presidency (21 June 2006; 3 hrs), topical EU matters (26 October 2006; 1 hr 10 min) and the
Finnish EU presidency (11 January 2007; 1 hr 50 min).
The results were obtained from the new online database maintained by the Eduskunta
using the keyword search ‘European Union’ (‘Euroopan unioni’), which is a general
search term subsuming other more specific EU categories.The same approach was used
for interpellations and written and oral questions.
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