Euroscepticism and the Early Warning System

Abstract

With the Treaty of Lisbon national Parliaments obtained a direct role in the legislative process of the European Union (EU). When the Commission releases a legislative proposal, each national Parliament has eight weeks to issue a Reasoned Opinion stating that the draft violates the EU principle of subsidiarity. This article provides context on this so-called Early Warning System (EWS), and then studies empirically when national Parliaments issue Reasoned Opinions under the EWS. A within-between panel regression covering all 28 EU countries for 2010-2016 leads to novel findings on the issuance of Reasoned Opinions. In particular, there is no robust statistical evidence that variations in public attitudinal Euroscepticism in a country affect the number of Reasoned Opinions issued by its Parliament. In contrast, electoral Euroscepticism as measured by the election of Eurosceptic Parliaments is found to have a strongly significant across-country effect on the number of Reasoned Opinions.

Keywords: European Union, Subsidiarity, Euroscepticism, Early Warning System

JEL Classification: D7, H77, P48