The European Parliament Against the Background of the Rule of Law and the Standards of a Parliamentary System: Selected Issues

Abstract

The aim of this study is to show the legal status and mechanism of action of the European Parliament against the background of classical standards of the rule of law in a democratic system. This study shows the extent of the deviation of the European Parliament from these standards and highlights its special features by using historical-, theoretical-, and dogmatic-legal methods. This helps to understand what parliamentarism is built into the present concept of the rule of law, and what distinguishes it from the classically understood assumptions of a parliamentary system. Specifically, this study comprises three key issues: the nature of the subject that equips the Parliament with democratic legitimacy, the way it is situated in the mechanism of power or, finally, the extent to which it is bound by existing legal norms. This research perspective is, of course, limited in nature and deals with selected issues. The crux of the study makes the reader aware that at the level of the European Union a new type of parliament and, consequently, a new type of parliamentarism has developed, and the rule of law applicable here is clearly different from the analogous principle found in traditional states.