Diane Fromage

Anna Herranz-Surrallés

Ten years after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, has executive predominance in EU-related matters disappeared? How have executive-legislative relations in the EU evolved over a crisis-ridden decade, from the financial and migration crises, to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic? The Lisbon Treaty could be expected to lead to the re-balancing of powers in favour of parliaments, for it significantly enhanced the roles of both the European Parliament and national parliaments. A decade later the contributions to this edited volume examine – for the first time in such an extensive breadth and from a multi-level and cross-policy perspective – whether this has actually materialised. They highlight that diverging tendencies may be observed, and that important variations over time have occurred, depending particularly on the occurrence of crises. As stated in the fascinating epilogue by Peter Lindseth (University of Connecticut School of Law), this is an 'admirably coherent collective volume, whose contributions provide an excellent overview of key aspects of executive-legislative relations in the European system since the Treaty of Lisbon'. This edited volume will hence be of interest to both academics and practitioners interested in future reforms designed at the European and national levels to improve the EU's democratic quality.

Executive-legislative (Im)balance in the European Union

Thomas Christiansen

This volume addresses an important aspect of Brexit that has been ever-present in public debates, but has so far not received corresponding attention by academic scholars, namely the role of parliaments and citizens in this process. To address this gap, this book brings together an international group of authors who provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary treatment of this subject. Specifically, the contributors, scholars from the UK and across Europe, provide diverse accounts of the role of regional, national and European parliaments and citizens from the perspectives of Law, Political Science and European Studies. The book is structured in three parts focused on developments, respectively, in the UK, in the parliaments of the EU27, and at the EU level. Beyond providing a comprehensive examination of the scrutiny of Brexit, the book utilises the insights gained from this experience for a study of executive-legislative relations in the European Union more generally, examining the balance, or lack thereof, between governments and parliaments. In this way, the book also speaks to some of the long-lasting, indeed perennial questions about the effects of constitutional provisions and political practice in the context of European democracy.

Diane Fromage

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