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Paved with Good Intentions: Ambiguities of Empowering Parliaments after Lisbon

The subsidiarity control mechanisms of the Lisbon Treaty have received much attention with their promise to redress the position of national and regional parliaments, which were seen as losers in the integration process. One year later, beyond formal rules and good intentions, the question remains as to whether these novelties actually succeeded. This paper assesses the formal and informal changes regarding the position of national parliaments that took place following the Lisbon Treaty. The record of the “first year after” shows that while there is significant activism among legislative actors, actual change has been very limited so far. The reasons for this are both institutional and structural. The new provisions only partly shift control back to national legislatures. Not only do these provisions require preventively high thresholds but the involvement of national legislature’s also occurs at a rather late stage in the EU policy-cycle. Adding to this, incentives of individual MPs to engage in matters of subsidiarity are low and will continue to be so.