Paper Titles & Abstracts

The paper intends to analyze the role of the European Parliament and that of the National Parliaments within the (future) Economic and Fiscal Governance system. Indeed, to face the current economic and financial crisis a number of different types of measures have been proposed and/or adopted: the so-called "Sixpack" and "Two-Pack", the Fiscal Compact, the Euro-plus pact, the setting up of the ESM, the package for the Banking supervision etc. This new framework is clearly challenging the post-Lisbon institutional balance and the democratic legitimacy of the EU decision-making. As it is now, in fact, the Lisbon Treaty does not contain the necessary instruments to face the emerging challenges that are testing the EU capacity to properly react maintaining, at the same time, the community method at the heart of the EU decision-taking.For this reason, both the Commission and the European Parliament are putting forward some proposals that would enhance the democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU. The "Blueprint" of the Commission, the Report "Towards a Genuine Economic and Monetary Union" of the President of the European Council, the recent Own-Initiative Report (2012/2151) of the European Parliament have maybe shown the path for future and important reforms towards the attainment of a Political Union. In this scenario, as clearly stated, "the level of democratic legitimacy always needs to remain commensurate with the degree of transfer of sovereignty from Member States to the European level".Will the EP and the NPs be actually granted of the necessary tools to fulfill their respective roles? Will the revision of the Lisbon Treaty be necessary? And will the NPs be willing to further cede the role of "democratic legitimizer" to the EP? The paper tries to answer these questions by analyzing the ongoing work in Brussels and in the EU capitals.