The main aim of the article is to compare the power of the Czech representatives in the European Parliament with the power of representatives from other countries, and to compare the power of the Czech political parties in the Lower House of the Czech Parliament with the power of parties’...

This paper shows that the main pattern of European democratisation has unfolded along the lines of an EU organised as a multilevel system of representative parliamentary government and not as a system of deliberative governance as the transnationalists propound. But the multilevel EU has...

The European Commission plays a major role as regulator in the process of implementation of European legislation. Just looking at the figures of implementing measures one will find that the Commission adopts more than 2.500 such legal acts per year. As is well known the Commission is not alone...

Comitology committees are often accused of not being accountable. This paper aims to provide building blocks to analyze the validity of this claim. After briefly discussing the meaning and aims of accountability, it is discussed where the actual accountability problems can be expected....

The European Council occupies a central role in European politics. Yet it is not officially accountable to any public or parliamentary body for the decisions it makes on behalf of European citizens. National parliaments are only entitled to exert control over their own Heads of Government or...

This article seeks to explain the varying, and sometimes intriguing, outcomes of the past three revisions of the Treaty concerning the Community’s Common Commercial Policy (CCP). The analysis particularly focuses on the development of competence and decision rules, i.e. the process of...

Quantitative research in the field of European Union (EU) politics has focused on the internal dynamics of either the Council of Ministers (the Council) or the European Parliament (the Parliament). Theoretical accounts of bicameralism in the EU have understood the Parliament as a unitary actor....

The Treaty on European Union (EU) has on the one hand increased democratic legitimacy of the integration process by confering new powers to the European Parliament (EP) - legitimacy viewed as an attribute-, while on the other hand acceptance by the citizens - legitimacy conceived as orientation...

This paper analyses the so-called 'Draft Treaty of Amsterdam' of 19 June 1997, focusing on the changes concerning the institutions and the decision-making procedures. It is argued that the sum of envisaged changes will considerably alter the institutional balance between the three main actors,...