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THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND ITS INITIATIVE AND OVERSIGHT CAPACITY. THE POLITICAL AGENDA OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL...
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requiring the incorporation of the principle of
budgetary stability into national legislation.
Spain tackled this requirement in the summer
2011, through the reform of Article 135 of the
Constitution, anticipating subsequent European
demands. The signing and transposition of the
Treaty into national law is, on the other hand, a
necessary condition to be a potential recipient
of funding from the ESM. Once again, this re-
form of the institutional framework was done
outside the community method, without the
States, and, therefore, without conferring ad-
ditional power to the European Parliament for
its supervision.
Therefore, over the last five years, the Un-
ion, and especially the Eurozone, has moved
along intergovernmental tracks, with a grow-
ing influence of the Eurogroup, greater power
for the Commission without real oversight by
the European Parliament and several Treaties
signed outside the community method. There is
probably no going back from legislative chang-
es that have imposed this institutional revision,
but the political design that has been taking
shape must be reviewed to give greater demo-
cratic legitimacy to the Union itself. In this re-
spect, in the current term there are moves to
redress some of these imbalances, which will
be discussed below.
However, not everything done in the last
term of office went down that intergovernmen-
tal path, reducing the role of the Parliament.
Banking Union, launched by the European
Council of June 2012, is probably a counter-
point and represents a watershed in the Euro-
zone crisis. The commitment to banking union
and, therefore, to the future of the euro allowed
Mario Draghi to announce that he would do
whatever it takes (and some measures have
been at the limit of his mandate) to ensure the
integrity of the Union’s currency. That step and
its subsequent implementation, following the
model of the only truly federal economic policy,
monetary policy, has allowed the Eurozone to
recover certain stability, with responsibility to
finish overcoming the crisis shifting to the exe-
cution of fiscal policy.
Banking union brought about the creation of
the Single Supervisory Mechanism, under the
aegis of the ECB, following a single and com-
mon regulation; a Single Resolution Mechanism
and the resulting Single Resolution Fund. The
legislative activism that crystallised this project,
along with the key role of the Parliament, both
in its passage and in the ex post selection and
control, has been fundamental in the economic
improvement of the Eurozone, following the
community method and with full supervisory
powers on the part of the Parliament. True, the
Resolution Fund is short of resources and there
is still no common deposit insurance, a regula-
tion that has already been submitted by the
Commission and which is now on the desks of
the legislative chambers, facing the risk, inciden-
tally, of being blocked. Yet all that, and still
pending the completion of the model, repre-
sents the greatest progress in a federal union
around the euro countries that is set to gain
prominence in the present and future of Europe.
Parliamentary competences in the
legislative and oversight process
Beyond these twists and turns in the European
project over the last few years, it is worth stop-
ping to look at the European Parliament’s power
as a federalising institution of the Union and a
representative of the European demos. Certain-
ly much has been written on the nature and
powers of the Parliament, but allow me to run
through the main issues of interest.