Selected legal issues concerning the participation of the Polish Sejm in the making of European Union law

Abstract

Polish membership in the European Union finds its expression, among other things, in the powers of the Polish Sejm to participate in the European law-making process. The rules of this participation are provided for in the heterogeneous, fluctuating and evolving body of European and domestic law. Its complex nature, stretching between the constitutional foundations of political power, on the one hand, and the procedural matters of the parliamentary practice, on the other, offers a wide range of legal challenges to anyone who applies it. The paper aims to reveal that diversity and addresses some aspects of parliamentary practice when dealing with matters involving the EU. The issues of concern are selected with respect to the experience gained and best practice developed by the Sejm’s legal services: the Legislative Bureau and the Bureau of Research. All of them are systemic and – as it is argued – derived directly from the still unsettled question of the constitutional basis for the newly acquired competences of the national parliament to act on the European stage. The paper deals with the accountability of the Sejm’s committee for EU matters, cross-border interparliamentary cooperation and the subsidiarity check, as well as the legal representation of the Sejm in the European forum.