Beschreibung

In 1952, politicians from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg formed an Ad Hoc Assembly with the aim of drafting a constitution for a future European Political Community. Rediscovering this previously neglected origin of parliamentary Europe, Kari Palonen investigates the significance of the Ad Hoc Assembly for the politicization of European integration. He delves into how the debates of the assembly functioned as a project of European integration after the Second World War, interpreting it as a moment in the political theory and conceptual history of parliamentarism that opens new perspectives on the later stages of the parliamentarization of the EU.

The book analyses a parliamentary alternative for supranational Europeanisation of politics. The guiding idea of the book is: supranationalism and parliamentarism mark two aspects of politicisation of Europe by overcoming the order of nation-states and intergovernmental relations. The concept of politicisation is discussed with my typology of politics as a contingent activity, divided to politicisation, polity, politicking and policy aspects (applied for example in my Politik als parlamentarischer Begriff). Supranationalism implies politicisation by opening a polity level that transcends and challenges the existing order. Parliamentarism politicises issues by submitting them to debate from opposite perspectives, including the election and dismissal of government.
Applying parliamentary principles to a supranational polity was an unprecedented project. The members of the Ad-hoc Assembly, parliamentarians of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, had no models to follow but must invent and deliberate, how a parliamentary government could be realised in a supranational polity. During the half-year period the Ad Hoc Assembly members debated on central topics of parliamentary politics, such as the chamber system, the mode of elections, the setup, control and dismissal of a European government as well as demarcations between the European and member-states as polities in plenum and committees. The Assembly’s Draft Treaty proposed a permanent European Executive Council, elected and dismissable by a bicameral European Parliament.

The author:Kari Palonen is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

The subject:
Political science

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Additional Content

Table of contents + reading sample

Autor*innen

Kari Palonen

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Keywords

August 2024, Council of Europe, European Government, European Political Community, European Union, parliamentary debates, parliamentary government, political theory, politicisation of Europe, supranational parliamentarism, supranational polity, West European history