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National and Regional Parliaments in the European Constitutional Order. Edited by Philipp Kiiver. Groningen: Europa Law Publishing, 2006. pp. ix + 132. €36, $58.

Reviewed by Dimitry Kochenov, Faculty of Law, University of Groningen.

 

The small book edited by Kiiver discusses some fascinating dimensions of the role the parliaments of the Member States play in the European constitutional order. Besides touching on a well researched axis of national parliaments’ involvement at the European level, it puts an emphasis on the European role of the parliaments of the sub-national units within the constitutional orders of the Member States. It also includes a discussion of the role played in the integration process by a parliament of a candidate country coupled with a general assessment of the paradigms of the involvement of the parliaments of the Member States in the process of integration.

 

The selection of articles in the book covers a number of case-studies, including a study of EU involvement of a ‘classical’ national parliament (studies of the British and Dutch Parliaments), of a national parliament incorporating regional parliaments by virtue of a sophisticated constitutional structure (using an example of the nonocameral Belgian system (63), lying somewhat in between the national parliaments and the regional parliaments per se, while incorporating numerous features of both), a ‘classical’ regional parliament (using a Scottish Parliament example), and a candidate country parliament (drawing on the Croatian Parliament’s experience).

 

Fusing legal and political science approaches, the edited volume is dealing with a number of facets of the national parliaments’ involvement in law- and policymaking at the European level. The contributions focus especially on the subsidiarity control mechanism proposed by the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe and the role of the national and regional parliaments at the drafting stages, as well as their involvement in controlling the executive in European matters.

 

Providing an exciting read, the book’s main problem is its size, or to put it otherwise, its lack of ambition. It was clearly not conceived as a fully-fledged analysis of the role to be played by national parliaments of different levels in the process of European integration. Thus it does not deal with all the main areas of Member States’ parliaments’ involvement with European affairs, nor does it produce a complete picture of the enormous variety of parliamentary institutions already exercising or aspiring to play a European role in the future. The case-studies provided are however of great academic interest both for lawyers and political scientists. Indeed, the choice of the assemblies discussed is probably one of the strongest points of the book as a whole, even going beyond the high level of individual contributions included by Kiiver in the volume.

 

‘National and Regional Parliaments in the European Constitutional Order’ is thus a perfect teaser outlining the main problems and a number of interesting moments of the relationship between the assemblies in the Member States and the European integration project most widely conceived. To truly enjoy this book, it should be read accompanied by somewhat more ambitious studies on the topic. In this capacity, it is an excellent side-read to be recommended together with Kiiver’s monograph ‘The National Parliaments in the European Union: A Critical View on EU Constitution Building’ (Kluwer Law International, The Hague/London/New York, 2006). If this was the editor’s intention, the book is clearly a success.