Building the capacity of the Romanian Parliament to be an active European actor
Period of implementation: March 2010 – December 2010
A recent report of the European Commission shows the Romanian Parliament as one of the least responsive in drafting EU legislation. According to a procedure adopted by the Commission couple of years ago as an attempt to prefigure Lisbon Treaty, the EU legislation proposals are sent to the National Parliaments in order to check their positions and to gather feed-back. Bucharest Parliament became part of this procedure after 2007 accession but it did not send a single position paper in this period.
The Lisbon Treaty has just come into force and the above mentioned procedure has become constitutional rule: National Parliaments will be consulted in drafting EU legislation, effectively becoming an actor in Brussels’ complex institutional design. Romania`s Parliament is not prepared for such a task; The Parliament`s Common Committee on EU affairs is barely functional, not mentioning its performances; the Romanian MPs risk losing their chance to have a voice in the place where 60% of the legal rules that affect Romanian citizens are drafted.
This project will make a comprehensive assessment of the current institutional situation in Romania and will propose good practices for the Romanian Parliament to import from other legislatives in EU. The German model seems to have a particular relevance for Romania, since the supervision role of the Parliament is strongly institutionalized there, without going too far into a Parliament-led model.
4) Project goal and objectives
This project is addressing the above mentioned issues by:
a) Assessing the current institutional capacity of the Parliament to actively engage in EU legislative process
b) Contributing to the capacity building process by consultancy and training.
Donor: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung