In September, Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka, has launched a 3-year research project entitled “Two sides of the same coin? Unraveling the potential of inter-parliamentary cooperation in the European Union” financed by the National Science Centre under the OPUS scheme (amount of funding: 200 000 EUR).
The overall intention of the project is to explore the potential of inter-parliamentary relations by identifying factors that foster and impede effective cooperation between national parliaments and the EP (IPC) in the area of EU affairs. This involves identification of hitherto unexplored institutional preferences of the EP and national parliaments with regard to mutual cooperation. The research questions the project poses are: Are the factors behind these preferences endogenous (i.e., related to political affiliation or nationality) or exogenous (i.e., determined by policy sectors or type of WMP)? What preferences do the EP and national parliaments have with respect to potential reforms to strengthen IPC in the EU?
The second research objective of the project is to examine the impact of the recently concluded Conference on the Future of Europe, as well as its related follow-up, on IPC dynamics in the EU. The research questions are: Did the CoFoE act as a driver or a hindrance to inter-parliamentary cooperation ? Due to its institutional design, did the CoFoE become a catalyst for new forms of transnational parliamentarism in the EU? In what areas have we seen improvement or deterioration of IPC ? The results of the research should contribute to the development of a refined theoretical framework to study inter-parliamentary relations, one which takes into account the transnational dynamics of political processes in the EU.
The project has started on September 1, 2022 and will last three years. For more information about the project, as well as possibilities for cooperation, please contact: Karolina.boronska-hryniewiecka@uwr.edu.pl