| Review of: | Promoting Unity, Preserving Diversity? Member State Institutions and European Integration by A.M. Gates |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Michael Shackleton |
| Reviewed in: | Journal of Common Market Studies |
| Date accepted online: | 10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 45, Issue 05, Pages 1159-1167 |
Book Reviews
This book sets out to make a general case about the tension between unity and diversity in the European Union on the basis of an analysis of six European Affairs committees in national parliaments of Member States. It argues that the weaknesses of the EU can be attributed, at least in part, to the limited and uneven contributions that such committees can make to the decisions taken by the EU. It suggests that one way of remedying such weaknesses would be the establishment of common rules laying down the specific role of national parliaments in the EU structure. The argument is far from convincing.
The author appears to wish to deny certain essential characteristics of the Union. To say that 'each Member State is presumed to follow along with decisions made in Brussels, even in cases in which decisions were not reached via unanimity' (p. 24) is to ignore the conscious choice of qualified majority voting made by national governments through successive treaty revisions. It makes little or no sense to imagine an EU where Member States would be free to ignore decisions they did not like, when they are themselves an integral part of the process. The structure has a legal base that cannot be wished away, precisely because states set it up so as to further their collective interests.
The discussion also ignores the debate that is taking place amongst national parliaments in the EU. The draft constitution is mentioned briefly but there is no reference to the proposal within it that national parliaments should be able to oblige the Commission to reconsider a proposal if one-third of them consider that it contravenes the principle of subsidiarity. The present debate is one about how and whether national parliaments can act collectively to influence EU decisions, not about taking them back to a world where they can individually block EU changes. Such a world stands in effective contradiction to the EU as it exists.
Some interesting points are made about the origins and role of the different national parliament committees. The reader will be struck by the great differences between them, essentially as a result of varying national political conditions. It seems strange then to discover the proposal that these differences be ironed out by a set of common rules. It would not only go against the national traditions of each country, a cornerstone of diversity, but contribute to that very 'encroachment' of the EU that the author finds so distasteful. The curious will not find here a compelling case for the revival of national parliamentary institutions in the EU.