THE ROLE OF NATIONAL PARLIAMENT IN MOLDOVA’S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: TOWARDS GREATER DEMOCRATIZATION

The paper first outlines main findings and trends in the research on the role of national parliaments in European integration. The great bulk of literature focuses on the EU scrutiny of legislatures and denotes a weakening of national parliaments vis-a-vis their governments. However, the role of legislatures of countries aspiring to the EU membership seems to be a rather under-researched field. This paper aims at exploring the state of the art of the Moldovan Parliament’s engagement into the European integration process, focusing on three central functions of the national parliaments: 1) the legislative function and propelling the reforms, 2) the parliamentary scrutiny of reform implementation by their governments; and 3) parliamentary diplomatic efforts in the European integration debate. The relevance of this paper lies not only in its contribution to the existing European integration research. It also touches upon the question of the democratic development of the main democratic institution in the post-Soviet country embracing European values and offers new issues to consider pertaining to how the national parliament of a country seeking future EU membership can play a greater and effective role through its deeper functional and institutional democratization in European integration based on Moldova’s case.