Information or Accountability? A Research Agenda on European Commissioners in National Parliaments

Research on national parliaments in the EU has greatly expanded since the Treaty of Lisbon fully recognized their role in providing democratic legitimacy for EU decision-making. However, the direct interaction between national parliaments and the European Commission has received little academic attention. This research note seeks to frame a research agenda that explores whether, and under which conditions, the Commission visits to national parliaments have the potential to develop from sites for inter-institutional exchange of information to arenas for cross-level accountability. We lay out a framework to capture the relation between national parliaments and the Commission based on three kinds of indicators: the formal set-up, logic of interaction, and public communication. We illustrate the kind of evidence and range of variation that this agenda may unearth by applying this framework in an exploratory analysis of Trade Commissioner Malmström's visits to seven national parliaments in the EU.