The Lisbon Treaty clearly expresses that the EU should accede to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). Nonetheless, the Court of Justice ruled, quite unexpectedly, in December 2014, that the draft agreement on the accession is not compatible with EU law.

Two years ago Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to renegotiate the United Kingdom’s EU membership and then hold a referendum if reelected. The date of the election, 7 May, is approaching and the question of who will win the election and what that will mean for the relationship to the EU is of interest to many Europeans.

The euro crisis has left no EU member state unaffected. European cooperation and solidarity has for many years been put to the test in a way which has no parallel in the post-war period.

The Greek parliamentary election in January resulted in a coalition government with the radical left-wing party Syriza obtaining the most votes. What does this new constellation mean for Greece’s EU relations and the ongoing negotiations over the financial assistance to the country? In this paper, Dionyssis Dimitrakopoulos describes the changes to the political landscape and its implications for the country’s role in the EU and the eurozone.

With the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament increased its power of scrutiny over the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). But what role does the European Parliament, and more specifically, the political groups of the European Parliament play in that policy area? In this policy analysis, the author Daniel Fiott argues that the political groups of the European Parliament indeed do play a diplomatic role in the European Union’s foreign policy.

The 2014 European Parliament elections took place after many years of severe austerity policies, comprehensive bailout programmes and increasing political resistance to European integration. Due to the strengthened role of the European Parliament by the Lisbon Treaty, the expectations on public interest, media coverage and electoral participation grew.

As a consequence of the economic crisis, a series of measures have been undertaken in order to strengthen the economic-political coordination in the EU. This development raises several questions in relation to the Swedish EU membership.

Elections to the European Parliament famously fail to excite the interest of voters. The result is low turnout at these elections, particularly in some post-communist EU member states.

For about fifteen years, the European Commission has taken initiatives to provide better regulation. Since the introduction of the early warning mechanism, enabling the national parliaments to have a say on whether or not the legislative proposals comply with the principle of subsidiarity, it is arguably even more important that the legislative proposals maintain a high degree of quality.

National parliaments are often thought of as having lost substantial powers due to European integration. In what way has the rapid decision-making of the EU during the Eurozone crisis affected national parliaments within the Union? In this publication, political scientists Katrin Auel and Oliver Höing present their analysis of activity within the national parliaments of the EU during the Eurozone crisis.