Investigation of scrutiny of EU legislation, case study of Belgium and the Netherlands
Date
2018
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Current thesis will be investigating the different ways of scrutinising European
Union legislation in the member states. Belgium and the Netherlands have been
chosen to be the comparative cases in the current study in order to show the
different outcomes of countries with similar background. The research asks what
are the main ways of member states to become closely involved in EU affairs and
what motivates the parliaments to get actively engaged. Theories on the scrutiny of
EU legislation provide plenty of relevant reasons for close cooperation between the
EU and member states. Belgium and the Netherlands have very different scrutiny
mechanisms and the outcome also varies, with Belgian parliament always scoring
lower than the Dutch one. Investigating the two cases brings out that the reasoning
for countries is always individual and there is no universal way to evaluate the
member states all together.