Parliamentary Collective Action under the Early Warning Mechanism

The Lisbon Treaty introduced the Early Warning Mechanism into the EU decision-making process, under which National Parliaments monitor the subsidiarity compliance of EU legislative proposals. Whilst it is argued that in doing so they meet a collective action problem, National Parliaments have triggered the mechanism twice so far (COM/2012/0130/‘Monti II’ and COM/2013 0534/‘EPPO’). This paper analyzes how Parliaments managed to overcome the identified problem in these cases. It is demonstrated that they used to this end effective leadership and communication in the sense of inter-parliamentary cooperation.