L'influence des parlements européens sur la politique européenne de contrôle des frontiers: le cas du parlement français

Abstract

The capacity of national Parliaments to influence the EU affairs has been a long debated issue in the academic literature and scholars have analyzed it mainly by assessing formal parliamentary capacities to control their executives, while looking into the activity of national Parliaments in all EU policy sectors. This type of analysis may be distorted: national Parliaments may act differently according to specific policy sectors. The aim of this proposal is to challenge the general findings of the academic literature on national Parliaments in EU affairs by looking into a very salient policy sector, the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice and more precisely into the Schengen reform, when analyzing the political control over the EU legislation and the "European" activity of the French Parliament. Even though, the Treaty of Lisbon and the 2008 Constitutional Reform gave additional powers to the French Parliament, I will show by mapping its activity in the field of borders control that, independently of its new prerogatives it has still a very weak influence over the EU legislation.