NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS IN THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS

The paper aims at describing the roles that member state parliaments play in the process of European integration. The main focus is put on co-operation of those parliaments with their respective governments in matters pertaining to the broadly understood European context. The relatively minor significance attached to national parliaments in the EU is also reflected in the role of the European Parliament whose competences are very different from those vested in a typical national parliament. Because it is extra-parliamentary groups that have the decisive voice in the European Union, when it comes to relations of individual member states with the EU organs, those groups will predominantly come in contact with organs of the executive power, and o f the government in particular, of those states. Consequently, in the area of European policy, we may only talk of the supervisory role, or collaboration between a parliament and its respective government. The prototype of a specialised parliamentary commission exercising such supervisory, or controlling functions, was the Commission for European Community matters created by the German Bundesrat in 1957. Today, similar organs include such specialist quasi-commissions as delegations (France) or giuntas (Italy) which most commonly function as independent organs of those chambers. However, regardless of the type of their institutional character, they shall remain the basic control, supervision and co-operation instrument in relations to decisions agreed with other member states governments, but concerning European policies carried out by individual members States. Those commissions may either actively participate in the process of working out of the common position (e.g. as in Germany), or they may remain silent and be only politely informed about the decisions already taken at the executive level (e.g.Italy)