Dritto e rovescio nella trama della multilevel governance federale ed europea. Sulla marginalità delle assemblee legislative in Germania, Austria e nel Belgio

Regional assemblies are among the losers of the European inte-gration process. Strengthening information rights and parliamentary scrutiny at both the national and the sub-national level is considered as the right way to address the European democratic deficit. The new toolbox provided by the Lisbon Treaty for a stronger commit-ment of regional assemblies within the EWS seems to be ineffective, even in genuine federal states, like Germany, Austria and Belgium. This paper examines the different domestic institutional frame-works emphasizing that, as the assemblies are getting more involved in EU proposals scrutiny, they rely always more on the technical ex-pertise of their government and on the support of parliamentary staff, which is far from an enhanced democratic control on EU matters.