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National Parliaments and EU decision-making

Under the Treaty of Lisbon, the national Parliaments of the European Union (EU) Member States were given a number of new rights and powers.

Article 12 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Protocol No 1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) give national Parliaments the right to receive information directly from the EU institutions on legislative programmes, consultative documents, Council of the European Union minutes, etc., in addition to EU legislative acts.

Article 5 TEU and Protocol No 2 TFEU give them the right to object to EU proposals on the basis of subsidiarity. Where national Parliaments consider that legislative acts proposed by the European Commission do not comply with subsidiarity, they have the right to send a reasoned opinion to the Commission within 8 weeks of transmission of the draft in all official EU languages.

Each Member State’s national Parliament is allocated two votes. If the Commission receives reasoned opinions representing at least one third of the votes allocated to the national Parliaments (or a quarter in the case of proposals in the area of justice, freedom and security), it is required to review its proposal and decide whether to maintain, amend or withdraw it. It must then justify its decision for doing so. This system is known as the yellow card procedure.

Where the Commission receives reasoned opinions representing a majority of the national Parliament votes and the proposal falls under the ordinary legislative procedure, the Commission must review its proposal and decide whether to maintain, amend or withdraw it. Where it decides to maintain it, it must justify its decision to do so to the European Parliament and the Council, explaining why the proposal complies with the principle of subsidiarity. This is known as the orange card procedure. Where a majority of members of the European Parliament or 55% of members of the Council consider a proposal does not comply with the subsidiarity principle, the proposal is rejected.

Under Article 70 TFEU, national Parliaments must be kept informed of the evaluation system of Member States’ policy implementation in the area of freedom, security and justice. Articles 85 and 88 TFEU permit their scrutiny of European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation and European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation activities.

The treaties allow for the use of general and specific passerelle clauses that make it possible to change from unanimity to qualified majority voting in the Council, or from a special legislative procedure to the ordinary legislative procedure. Such an example would be Article 81 TFEU. The proposals for such a change have to be notified to national Parliaments, which can oppose the proposal within 6 months.

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