Explaining the Diversity of Scrutiny Models. National Parliaments and the European Union: Baltic States in Comparative Perspective

A large and growing body of literature has investigated the national parliaments and their involvement in the activities of the Union. However, the literature does not fully cover all the national parliaments of new Member States which joined the EU after the largest enlargement of the Union in 2004. As well, little is known about the national parliaments of Baltic Member States. This paper aims to study the scrutiny models adopted by Baltic parliaments; it also seeks to address the question of ‗what factors do cause the differences in Baltic parliaments‘ scrutiny strategies?‘ Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia belong to the same group of countries and they have been the members of the European Union since 2004. Those countries have strong political, economic and cultural ties with similar size of population. It is interesting to learn how those three countries, which are very similar in most aspects, behave in different ways when it comes to parliamentary scrutiny of EU affairs. The analysis conducted in the research will based on prior studies of EU-15. Hence, the degree of influence of three explanatory variables is investigated in the study: 1) public support for membership; 2) party Euroscepticism; and 3) frequency of minority government