Olivier Costa

Steven Van Hecke

This book assesses the impact of the May 2019 European elections as well as the Covid-19 pandemic on the EU’s politics, institutions, and policies. Special attention is paid to the impact of these events on the different political forces as well as on the Union’s institutional balance, its priorities and the reform of its budget and policies. Because of the many post-electoral uncertainties, the book also takes into account how the relations between the Parliament, the European Council and the new Commission have developed. Furthermore, it analyses the capacity of the von der Leyen Commission to implement an ambitious programme, especially in the context of an unfolding pandemic. The objective of this book is to study the 2019 electoral sequence (parliamentary elections, appointment of EU institutions leaders, investiture of the Commission, new legislative programme) and determine its influence on the main institutional and political challenges for the 2019-2024 legislature. In other words, the volume deals with the question of who holds the EU’s leadership after the 2019 elections and how it handles the 2020-2021 pandemic.

The EU Political System After the 2019 European Elections

Thomas König

Sylvain Brouard

In ten years 80 per cent of the legislation related to economics, maybe also to taxes and social aff airs, will be of Community origin.” This declaration has been largely quoted, paraphrased and deformed by different authors, creating a persistent myth according to which 80% of the legislative activity of the national legislatures would soon be reduced to the simple transposition of European norms”. This book addresses the topic of the scope and impact of Europeanization on national legislation, as a part of the Europeanization debate which raises normative concerns linked to the “democratic deficit” debate. The state of the art shows that there are many assumptions and claims on how European integration may affect national legislation and, more generally, domestic governance but that there is a lack of solid and comparative data to test them. The aim of the book is to give a solid and comparative insight into Europeanization focusing on effective outcomes in a systematic way. This book analyzes the period 1986-2008 and includes an introduction, a global overview of European legislative activities which set the background for Europeanization of national legislatures, 9 country contributions (8 EU member states + Switzerland) including systematic, comparative and standardized data, tables and figures, and a conclusion with a comparative analysis of the European and domestic reasons for Europeanization. All national contributions conclude that Europeanization of national legislation is much more limited than assumed in the literature and public debate. It is limited to 10 to 30% of laws (depending on the country), far less than the 80% predicted by Jacques Delors and mentioned daily by medias and public opinion leaders to demonstrate EU domination on member states. Beside that general statement, the various chapters propose a deep insight on EU constraint over national legislation, providing much information on the kind of laws and policies that are Europeanized, the evolution of this process through time, the impact of Europeanization on the balance of powers and the relations between majority and opposition at national level, the strategies developed by national institutions in that context, and many other issues, making the book of interest to academics and policy-makers concerned with Europeanization and national legislation.

Olivier Costa

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