Europeanization of Domestic Legislatures

In a July 1988 Bulletin [of the European Parliament] Jacques Delors famously declared, In ten years 80 per cent of the legislation related to economics, maybe also to taxes and social affairs, will be of Community origin. This book addresses the topic of the scope and impact of Europeanization on national law production, as a part of the Europeanization debate which raises normative concerns linked to the democratic deficit debate. The state of the art shows that there are many assumptions on how European integration may affect national legislation and, more generally, national regimes but that there is a total lack of solid and comparative data to test them. The aim of the book is to give a new insight into Europeanization focusing on effective outcomes in a systematic way rather than on institutional rules or a couple of cases. The book deals with the period 1986-2008 and includes an introduction, a global overview of European Law production to set the background of national cases, 9 country contributions (8 EU member states + Switzerland) including systematic, comparative and standardized data, tables and figures, and a conclusion with a comparative summary of the results.§All national contributions conclude that Europeanization of lawmaking is much more limited than assumed in the literature and public debate. It is limited to 10 to 30% of laws (depending on the country), far less than the 80% predicted by Jacques Delors and mentioned daily by medias and public opinion leaders to demonstrate EU domination on member states. Beside that general statement, the various chapters propose a deep insight on EU constraint over national lawmaking, providing much information on the kind of laws and policies that are Europeanized, the evolution of this process through time, the impact of Europeanization on the balance of powers and the relations between majority and opposition at national level, the strategies developed by national institutions in that context, and many other issues, making the book of interest to academics and policy-makers concerned with Europeanization and national legislation.