Recasting Monism and Dualism in European Parliamentary Law: The Lisbon Treaty in Britain and France

Abstract

This chapter analyses the relevance of international law concepts of monism and dualism in the legal and political system of the European Union through the lens of national parliaments as inescapable ingredients in giving international law effect in domestic legal orders. We inquire about the reaction of the national parliaments of the United Kingdom and France, as examples of dualist and monist states, to three aspects of the Lisbon Treaty that most affect the European role of national parliaments: the EU’s call for national parliaments to monitor the EU institutions’ adherence to the principle of subsidiarity, the EU’s call for national parliaments to contribute to the good functioning of the Union and the extension of the scope of the codecision procedure. The main argument of this chapter is that although the EU is in many respects a monist constitutional setup that denies significance to the logic of mutual structuring of legal orders espoused in international law, the concepts of monism and dualism retain their explanatory force as regards the manner in which domestic parliaments shape their relations with the European Union.