A yellow card for the striker : national parliaments and the defeat of EU legislation on the right to strike

Abstract

In May 2012 national parliaments of the European Union (EU) issued their first yellow card under the Early Warning Mechanism of the Treaty of Lisbon. A sufficient number of them raised objections to a legislative proposal – the Monti II Regulation regarding the right to strike – that the Commission was required to review the proposal, which it subsequently withdrew. This outcome was, demonstrably, not a coincidence but the product of extensive interparliamentary co-ordination, enabled by the initiative of one determined parliament (Denmark's Folketing), the opportunity provided by a well-timed interparliamentary meeting, and the network of national parliament representatives in Brussels. A dynamic political process was set in motion in which a number of parliaments joined the effort to obtain a yellow card by, in effect, ‘voting against' Monti II before the eight-week deadline. The episode shows that, despite claims to the contrary, national parliaments have the capacity and willingness to use their new powers to exercise a collective influence in EU affairs.