Research Papers

This paper studies how national positions on euro crisis have been formed in three “new” Member States: Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic. It argues that while national coordination mechanisms on European policies are well established, the position formation processes and relative influence of actors involved change substantially in cases pertinent to general issues of the future of European integration and national sovereignty. Although the issues related to the euro crisis, such as the possibility of changing the Lisbon Treaty, drafting and signing a new fiscal treaty, lending more money to help other European economies etc., are certainly among the issues that require democratic legitimacy, national positions on these issues have not been legitimised more than national positions on other, everyday issues. On the contrary, in the countries studied in this paper, the inclusiveness of actors in the position formation process, which is supposed to be a sign of democratic legitimacy and transparency, has been more limited in the case of euro crisis than in other issues. Rules on national coordination mechanisms on European policies determine what actors are involved - from centralised executive departments and agencies, through national parliament to local administrations and interest representatives. In this case, the influence of national parliaments has been more limited, as has been the real inclusion of interest representatives. It is interesting that this has been the case in three countries that, although all new and from the same region, find themselves in different positions in the case of euro crisis: Slovakia already a member of the eurozone, Poland demonstrating interest to be involved despite the fact that it is not a member, and, finally, the Czech republic, the most euro-sceptic of the three. This allows us to draw broader conclusions on democratic legitimacy of EU-related national decision-making in times of crises.