The politicization of interparliamentary relations in the EU : constructing and contesting the 'Article 13 conference' on economic governance

Abstract

Article 13 of the Fiscal Treaty (2012) prompted the creation of an interparliamentary conference to discuss and oversee the EU’s post-crisis regime of economic governance. However, the first meeting of the ‘Article 13 Conference’, in October 2013, was beset by conflict. Surprisingly, the main cleavage was not a left–right debate over economic policy (for example, pro- versus anti-austerity), but a debate about the nature and purpose of the conference itself. This pitted the European Parliament (EP), preferring a weak conference with a narrow mandate, against a number of national parliaments that preferred a strong conference with a broad mandate. This cleavage was apparent in a series of constitutional, institutional and procedural disagreements that arose over the course of the setting-up of the Article 13 Conference, many of which remained unresolved even after its second and third meetings, in January and September 2014. At the root of this struggle lay competing visions for the parliamentary oversight of the EU: Should scrutiny be centralized in the EP, or should there be a new system of joint scrutiny involving the EP and national parliaments together?